Media literacy interventions present a unique opportunity through which to impact a number of different attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. However, a critical analysis of the media literacy literature revealed these studies show a mismatch between the conceptualizations offered for media literacy and the measures used to evaluate their effectiveness and that there is often no rationale provided to support the use of such measures. These problems in the literature present a major obstacle in the development of systematic research in the area of media literacy, as without clear guidelines or standards for measuring media literacy, studies cannot build upon one another. The purpose of this dissertation is to address this issue in the literature through the development of a scale to assess media literacy based on a strong conceptual and theoretical foundation.

The scale development process included the development of an initial set of open- and closed-ended items, three focus groups, data collection with an undergraduate sample, revisions of the scales, and data collection with a second sample of high school students. This process yielded two data sets of quantitative and qualitative data that were analyzed for scale usefulness in eliciting data of high quality. The results show preliminary support for a high quality scale for media literacy; however, more research is needed to continue the development of the measures.

The present study marks an important first step in laying out the process for the development of a scale upon which future studies may build. Given that the existing literature draws from multiple conceptualizations that do not provide specificity for how to operationalize concepts and how to design media literacy treatments, this body of literature has not been able to develop in a manner where replication studies or studies that extend on previous work have been possible. With the use of a strong and clear conceptualization to guide measure development, the present study has showed how scholars may apply the same scale development process to develop measures based on a clear conceptual framework to further our understanding of how to measure and design interventions for media literacy.