In previous chapters, we described several associations between students’ computer and information literacy (CIL) and selected variables such as gender and home background. Our aim in this chapter is to investigate the combined influence of a number of variables on variations in CIL, including individual (student-level) as well as contextual (schoollevel) variables. The ICILS research questions that we address in this chapter are the following:

• Research Question 2: What aspects of schools and education systems are related to student achievement in computer and information literacy?
• Research Question 3: What characteristics of students’ levels of access to, familiarity with, and self-reported proficiency in using computers are related to student achievement in computer and information literacy?
• Research Question 4:฀ What aspects of students’ personal and social backgrounds (such as gender, socioeconomic background, and language background) are related to computer and information literacy?

We used multilevel models to review the extent to which different factors at the student and school level are associated with variations in CIL. Factors of interest include those related to access to, use of, and familiarity with information and communication technology (ICT) as well as other variables reflecting students’ personal and social backgrounds.

Conclusion
Our results show that students’ experience with computers as well as regular use of computers at home had significant positive effects on CIL achievement in many of the ICILS countries even after we had controlled for the influence of personal and social context. This pattern suggests that familiarity with ICT, reflecting what students do and have done, contributes to students’ CIL achievement.
The availability of ICT resources at home, measured as the number of computers and having access to internet, was associated with CIL achievement. However, ICT resources, in particular the number of computers at home, had hardly any effect after socioeconomic background had been taken into account (although internet access remained significant in five of the 14 countries that satisfied sampling requirements). The probable reason behind this finding is that level of ICT resources in homes is associated with socioeconomic background.
We observed statistically significant effects of ICT-related school-level factors on CIL achievement in only a few countries. In a number of education systems, we recorded evidence of limited effects on CIL of the school average of students’ computer use (at home) and the extent to which students reported learning about ICT-related tasks at school. Because ICILS represents an initial exploration into the influences of schoollevel and student-level factors on CIL learning, these findings deserve further analysis in future research. The notion that school learning is an important aspect of developing CIL is a particularly important consideration and therefore worth investigating in greater detail.
Some of the effects of ICT-related factors that were no longer significant after we had controlled for the socioeconomic context of school could be considered proxies for other variables (resources, school climate, peer influences). In some countries, these effects may also reflect differences between school types and study programs.