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The levels of Self-Perceived and Observed Information Literacy for a sample of in-service teachers and future teachers of Primary and Secondary Education are analysed as a whole and by its components of Searching for, Evaluating, Processing and Communicating Information. To do so, two validated tools are used which enable us to obtain Self-Perceived Information Literacy levels (through a self-assessment questionnaire) and Observed Information Literacy levels (through performance measures) from 442 in-service teachers and future teachers of 7 educational institutions in 4 provinces of Castile and Leon (Spain). The results of the descriptive and inferential analyses show that the Self-Perceived Information Literacy is overestimated compared to the Observed Information Literacy for all groups, especially among future Primary Education teachers, with the in-service Secondary Education teachers showing the least difference between self-perception and performance. The Observed Information Literacy is at its best level among the Secondary Education teachers and lowest level among the future Primary Education teachers. At each educational level the performance of in-service teachers is always higher than the performance of future teachers, indicating the preponderance of experience versus the generational effect. The components of the Observed Information Literacy with the lowest values for all groups are Searching for and Evaluating Information and, therefore, specific training activities are recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The statistical multivariate analysis of Likert response scales, given their widespread use, is a controversial issue in the scientific community, mainly from the specification of the problem of measurement. This work aims to study various conditions of these ordinal scales affect the calculation of the product-moment and tetrachoric-polychoric correlation coefficients. For this purpose, a simulation study was applied in which 90 databases with 10 items each were generated. In the estimation of the databases, the following variables were controlled: number of response categories, symmetrical or asymmetric distributions of data, sample size and level of relationship between items. Thus, 90 matrices (10x10) were obtained which included the difference between the product-moment and tetrachoric-polychoric correlations. The graphical and variance analysis show how the product-moment correlation coefficient significantly underestimates the relationship between variables mainly when the number of response categories of the ordinal scale is small and the relationship between the variables is large. On the other hand, the statistical estimation of both coefficients is very similar when the starting relationship between pairs of variables is small and/or when the number of response options of the variables is greater than 5. The study concludes by making a recommendation to the applied researcher on the most appropriate correlation coefficient depending on the type of data available. Finally, the results are discussed from the previous studies, which reach some similar conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]