Assessing Digital Literacy Skills in Secondary and Higher Education: A Comprehensive Literature Survey of Validated Insttuments

Despite growing recognition of versatile digital literacy as essential for student success, limitations exist with many current self-reported competence measures, alongside gaps in authentic performance assessments grounded in multidimensional frameworks. This comprehensive literature review analyzed recent studies on digital literacy instruments for secondary and higher education students, gathering reliability and validity evidence while critiquing limitations. Findings reveal an overreliance on perceived ability ratings versus demonstrations of competency applying integrated knowledge, skills, and attitudes within representative academic contexts. On this note, custom surveys often lack standardization processes substantiating consistent measurement. Original synthesis illuminates avenues for instruments modeling sophisticated learning environments to quantify preparedness enacting higher-order technical, cognitive and ethical digital capabilities needed for college achievement and career readiness. Large-scale implementation of enhanced assessments could enrich comparative data evaluating developmental differences across demographic factors. This review contributes an up-to-date, focused analysis on the assessment of digital literacy for secondary and postsecondary education contexts specifically. Findings of the research address noted measurement gaps through actionable directions for instrumentation advancing essential skills. Insights can guide institutions’ assessment strategies and inform future tool designs to enrich understanding of this multidimensional construct demonstrating intensifying importance for academic, career and lifelong learning trajectories.