Investigating the Impact of Inequality in Access to Digital Technologies on the Quality of Education in Different Regions (Urban and Rural) of Marvdasht County
Keywords:
digital divide, educational quality, digital literacy, upper secondary school students, rural education, urban-rural inequality, Marvdasht CountyAbstract
Purpose: The present study aimed to investigate the impact of inequality in access to digital technologies on the quality of education among male upper secondary school students in urban and rural areas of Marvdasht County.
Methods and Materials: The study employed an applied descriptive-survey design with a correlational approach. The statistical population consisted of all male upper secondary school students in urban and rural areas of Marvdasht County during the 2025–2026 academic year. Based on Cochran’s formula, 375 students were selected through stratified random sampling. Data collection instruments included the PISA ICT Familiarity Questionnaire (Oecd, 2023) and the Internet Literacy Scale for High School Students (Cheng, 2023). Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling with the partial least squares approach and independent samples t-tests in IBM SPSS Amos.
Findings: The findings indicated significant differences between urban and rural students in all major research variables at p < .001. Rural students demonstrated significantly lower levels of access to hardware, access to stable internet, digital literacy, and educational quality compared to urban students. Digital literacy was identified as the strongest predictor of educational quality (β = 0.41), followed by access to stable internet (β = 0.35) and access to hardware (β = 0.21). The structural model explained 67% of the variance in educational quality (R² = 0.67). In addition, digital literacy played a significant partial mediating role in the relationship between technological access and educational quality.
Conclusion: The results demonstrate that the digital divide constitutes a major educational inequality affecting the quality of education among secondary school students. Educational quality is influenced not only by physical access to digital technologies but also by students’ digital literacy competencies.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Farzad Poorgholamy (Author); Ali Mohammad Ahmadi Gharacheh; Fatemeh Shafiee (Author)
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