The purpose of this study is to describe and analyse the process of construction and
validation of a questionnaire as a tool to collect data that enable the identification of the role of digital environments in the process of construction of gender identities in
adolescence in different sociocultural contexts (EDIGA project:
http://stellae.usc.es/ediga).(1)
This work results from the observation of a complex connexion between digital
technologies, gender and identity (Toft-Nielsen, 2016) that poses new educational
challenges. Based on the interpretation of digital environments as discursive machines in which gender power technologies operate (De Lauretis, 1989), a twofold game or controversy is unveiled (Latour, 2008): on the one hand, hegemonic relationships, subjectivities and manifestations of the self are perpetuated, and on the other hand, practices as opportunities of social change and transformation emerge. This controversy permeates the relationship of women and dissident identities with digital technologies and their presence in the world, appealing to the 2030 Agenda goals (UN, 2020) and the European Commission’s priorities for 2020-2024 (European Commission, 2020).
In this context, there is a pressing need for a political and educational intervention, for
which it is vital to know and understand, in relation to the practices (Reckwitz, 2002;
Shatzki et al., 2001) and power technologies (De Lauretis, 1989; Foucault, 1980) that
help to form teenagers’ gender identities in this time in history, what they are like and
how they take place. Along this line, a questionnaire was designed, addressed at
students aged 14 to 17 years, which intended to identify behaviour patterns,
manifestations of identity and sociocultural gender practices in digital environments, as well as the influence of the social and family, cultural and economic context.

The development of this tool was based on the paradigm of practice (Bourdieu, 1991;Reckwitz, 2002; Shatzki et al., 2001). Practices are conceived of as matrixes of human activity that are embodied, mediated, materially organised, routine, shared and
historically shaped. They consist of knowledge, meaning, power, language or social
institutions, among other aspects (Shatzki et al., 2001), which can only be explained if
they are related to the social conditions in which they were constituted and the habitus
that engendered them (Bourdieu, 1991). Based on the work of Reckwitz (2002), Shatzki et al. (2001) and Bourdieu (1991), the dimensions of the questionnaire were shaped: (I)
materialities (artefact and digital environment), (II) meanings (socially situated practical sense and motivation of the subject), (III) knowledge (technical, theoretical and contextual), and (IV) conditions of production (backstage, training, time, space and history). These were analysed as part of the most common activities in digital
environments: setting up a profile, taking selfies, recording videos, and creating and
forwarding memes.
For developing the items, the following were adopted as central theoretical themes:
(I) subjectivity as put forward by authors such as Foucault (1980) and Deleuze and
Guattari (1980); (II) practices in digital environments (Ferreira & Sibilia, 2020), and
(III) gender (Butler, 2004; De Lauretis, 1989), with an intersectional (Crenshaw, 1989)
and decolonial (Connell & Pearse, 2018) approach. The research points to the
sociocultural capital or race as constituent elements of identity and exposure to gender gaps (Silva Quiroz & Lázaro-Cantabrana, 2020

[1] Proyecto financiado por el Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación de España (ref.: PID2019-108221RB-I00).

The design of the questionnaire followed these stages: defining the construct, specifying its dimensions, developing indicators in each of the dimensions, and writing questions for each indicator (Padilla, 2002; Ruiz-Bueno, 2009). A team of 8 investigators worked on its preparation. In order to ensure content validity (Taherdoost, 2016), understood as the degree to which the elements of an instrument are relevant and representative of the construct (Yusoff, 2019), the first version was reviewed by a team of 7 experts (specialists in educational technology, development of social research tools and gender identity). The review led to including new answer options in some questions, improving the wording of a number of items and adapting certain linguistic expressions to the subjects’ age. This version was adapted to each country bearing in mind the language and the sociocultural characteristics of each of them. The questionnaire, to be applied online, was structured in 6 sections: one about sociodemographic questions, one about social network use and four about each of the practices mentioned (selfies, profile, memes and videos). There were 57 questions in total (some of which included several sections), in addition to the 14 sociodemographic questions. A pilot study was conducted (Mayorga-Ponce et al., 2020) with the intention of testing the tool in a sample of 61 participants with similar characteristics to those of the study population: young people aged 14 to 17 years living in Spain (specifically, in Galicia), Uruguay and Mexico. Among them, 44.3% identified themselves as cis men, 42.7% as cis women and 3.3% as trans women, with the remaining 9.7% distributed across other categories. The mean age was 15 years. We had 25 teenagers from Galicia, 21 from Mexico and 15 from Uruguay. Once the questionnaire was completed, the following elements were assessed using a scale of 1 (I totally dislike it) to 5 (I like it very much): images employed, colours used, overall design, wording of the questions, easiness to answer and duration. The subjects were also asked if there were any questions or terms that were difficult to understand and if the answer options presented were adapted to their circumstances or not. Lastly, the subjects were asked to make a general assessment of the questionnaire (from 1 to 10) and were given some space to describe how this tool should be improved.

The results of the pilot application show a positive assessment of the questionnaire. All aspects received a score of 4 or 5 in more than two thirds of the cases, except in relation to duration (only 43.7% of the subjects assigned it a value of 4 or 5). The high satisfaction shown with the design of the questionnaire stands out: 87.3% of the participants gave it scores of 4 and 5. The wording of the questions and answers was also another aspect that received high scores: 75% of the subjects attributed values of 4 and 5. On a scale of 1 to 10, the questionnaire obtained an average score of 8.2. In general, there were no difficulties to understand the terminology. The suggestions for improvement included notably one made by 8 subjects regarding the need to reduce the questionnaire length. An analysis of the answers led to removing some questions, such as the people followed or admired in the sections on memes, selfies and videos, as it became evident that a sufficient amount of information was already obtained in this regard in the first block. Also, other answer categories that had not been initially planned were included (for example, names of social networks), considering the amount of answers received within the category “Other”. Items about attitudes towards ethnic diversity and the LGTBIQ+ community were added. The peer review and the pilot study helped to improve the tool, which eventually consisted of 16 sociodemographic questions and 54 questions about the theme under study: 9 about social network use, 5 about profiles, 10 on memes, 15 on selfies, 14 about videos and 1 on attitudes.

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