# Students' AI Literacy Study Identifies Correlates and Educational Opportunities > Source: > Published: 2026-05-26 11:42:28.553509+00:00 # Students' AI Literacy Study Identifies Correlates and Educational Opportunities A new peer-reviewed article, "Students' Artificial Intelligence (AI) literacy: An exploratory study," by Mor Deshen and Noa Aharony appears in the Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, per infoDOCKET and the publisher page on SAGE. According to the article abstract shared on infoDOCKET, **190** higher-education students completed an online quantitative questionnaire measuring an **AI literacy** scale, the personality trait **openness to experience**, cognitive appraisals of **threat** and **challenge**, and four subscales of **AI Device Usage Acceptance (AIDUA)**: social-influence, hedonic-motivation, willingness to accept AI usage, and positive emotions toward AI. The abstract reports that students' AI literacy correlated positively with openness to experience, challenge appraisal, social-influence, hedonic-motivation, willingness to use, positive emotions toward AI, and **Generative AI (GenAI)** usage. The authors, via the abstract, suggest these findings indicate opportunities to enhance AI literacy through tailored educational programs and curriculum development in higher education. ### What happened A peer-reviewed article titled **"Students' Artificial Intelligence (AI) literacy: An exploratory study"** by **Mor Deshen** and **Noa Aharony** appears in the **Journal of Librarianship and Information Science**, as listed on the publisher site and summarized by infoDOCKET. According to the article abstract shared on infoDOCKET, the study used a quantitative online questionnaire completed by **190** higher-education students. The measures reported in the abstract include an **AI literacy** scale, the personality trait **openness to experience**, cognitive appraisals of **threat** and **challenge**, and four **AIDUA** subscales: **social-influence**, **hedonic-motivation**, **willingness to accept AI usage**, and **positive emotions toward AI**. The abstract reports positive correlations between AI literacy and openness, challenge appraisal, social-influence, hedonic-motivation, willingness to use, positive emotions toward AI, and **Generative AI (GenAI)** usage. ### Technical details The article abstract, as reproduced on infoDOCKET and listed on the journal site, identifies the study design as quantitative and cross-sectional with self-reported measures via an online questionnaire. The abstract names established validated questionnaires for the constructs but does not include full psychometric tables in the summary; readers should consult the full SAGE article for instrument reliability, exact item counts, and statistical models used. ### Editorial analysis - technical context Industry observers note that survey-based studies linking personality traits, affective attitudes, and technology acceptance to domain literacy are common in digital-literacy research. In that pattern, finding positive associations between **openness to experience**, affective motivators (hedonic-motivation, positive emotions), social influence, and actual tool usage is consistent with prior work on technology adoption and digital skill acquisition. For practitioners designing curricula, such patterns imply that addressing attitudes and exposure can be relevant levers when aiming to raise measurable AI literacy across cohorts. ### Context and significance Editorial analysis: The study sits in a growing corpus examining how exposure to **GenAI** tools and individual differences relate to measurable AI knowledge and literacy. For higher-education stakeholders and learning-science researchers, the reported sample-size and variable set make this a useful exploratory data point, but it remains one study with a modest sample and a cross-sectional design. Replication with larger, diverse samples and transparent psychometrics will be necessary to assess generalizability. ### What to watch Observers should watch for the full article's methods and results sections on the SAGE site for: - •detailed reliability and validity statistics for the AI literacy scale - •the statistical controls used when reporting correlations - •any subgroup analyses by gender and age that the abstract flags. Replication studies that move beyond self-report and cross-sectional designs would better establish causal links between GenAI exposure, attitudes, and literacy ## Scoring Rationale This is a notable, practitioner-relevant empirical study on AI literacy with a moderate sample and conventional survey measures. It informs curriculum and assessment discussions but is not a landmark methodological advance. Practice interview problems based on real data 1,500+ SQL & Python problems across 15 industry datasets — the exact type of data you work with. [Try 250 free problems](/problems)