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Montevideo by Joel santana Joelfotos via Pixabay 1400 x 300

DiSTO Uruguay

Photo by Joel Santana via Pixabay

Country context

  • Uruguay, situated between two giants: Argentina and Brazil, is the second smallest South American country with only 3.4 million inhabitants ().
  • Uruguay has very high human development by international standards (55th on the world ranking list according to ), with a Gini score of 40.6 according to  data (2022).
  • In the context of Latin America, Uruguay is generally considered a small but stable country, with a considerably developed welfare state. For example, Uruguay is ranked first in Latin America for its quality and stability of its democratic system (Source: ), lower perceptions of corruption (Source: ), and freedom of press (Source: ).
  • Nonetheless, compared to developed countries, Uruguay faces substantial socioeconomic inequalities, particularly in its educational outcomes. For example, the achievement of secondary compulsory education is lower than in other Latin American countries, and youth from higher socioeconomic households are 5 times more likely to finish school than their peers from lower socioeconomic households (71% vs 15%; Source: INEED).
  • On the other hand, the Uruguayan government has implemented several successful national-scale digital inclusion policies, particularly for children and seniors. One notable example is Plan Ceibal, a government-funded offspring of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. This policy provides laptops or tablets, fiber-optic connectivity and educational content free to all students and teachers in the public educational system (close to 1/6th of the total population). Moreover, some elements of Plan Ceibal, such as digital public libraries, are accessible to all Uruguayan residents (Source: ).
  • Similarly, the government-funded Plan Ibirapitá provides free tablets specially developed to senior citizens, as well as basic digital literacy courses to all lower-income pensioners (Source: ). The Uruguayan government also has a very active e-government and open-government agenda, substantially increasing the number of services and procedures available online during the past decade (Source: ).
  • 90% of the adult population use the daily (Source: ECH 2023, ), and access in young people (9-17) is almost universal (Source: Kids Online Uruguay).

Projects in Uruguay

In Uruguay the DiSTO project has two survey project areas – DiSTO Liceal and WIP+DiSTO Uy.

DiSTO Liceal

DiSTO Liceal or “De las tecnologías a los resultados tangibles. El rol de las habilidades digitales en el bienestar de los estudiantes de la educación media pública uruguaya” (From technologies to tangible outcomes: the role of digital skills in the wellbeing of Uruguay’s public secondary education students) was conducted in 2017. The project adapted, verified and implemented the DiSTO project to a very specific population: students at public secondary education in the capital city of Uruguay (Montevideo). At this specific moment in the life course of young Uruguayans, DiSTO Liceal gathered data on the relationships between their digital skills, their use of digital resources and the outcomes that arise from their use.

This was achieved via:

  • Expert validation of the questionnaire
  • 18 cognitive interviews to adapt the questionnaire to the Uruguayan public education context
  • A pilot questionnaire of 40 individuals and a pilot-scale study of 200 people
  • A representative survey of 1000 students in Montevideo’s Secondary Public School system

Impact

  • DiSTO Liceal informed key public education stakeholders on digital outcomes and inequalities within and between public high schools
  • A short research report in Spanish can be found 

Researchers

Matías Dodel (Universidad Católica del Uruguay), Susana Lamschtein (Universidad de la República) and Ana Laura Rivoir (Universidad de la República)

Funding

This research was supported by the Fondo Sectorial de Educación: Inclusión Digital (Agencia Nacional de Investigación e Innovación & Fundación Ceibal), the Department of Communications, Universidad Católica del Uruguay, and the Department of Sociology, Universidad de la República.

WIP + DiSTO Uy

WIP + DiSTO Uy integrates the World Internet Project (WIP) and the DiSTO project in a cross-sectional study of Uruguayan adults. The first edition of WIP + DiSTO Uy was conducted during 2017; the report from which can be found at the Universidad Católica del Uruguay's .

This was achieved through:

  • Assessment and synthesis of WIP Uruguay and DiSTO questionnaires
  • Expert validation of the questionnaire
  • 15 cognitive interviews (10 paired and 5 individual) to adapt the questionnaire to Uruguay
  • A pilot questionnaire of 40 individuals
  • Representative survey of 2000 Uruguayans with access to a cell phone 

Impact

WIP + DiSTO Uy data was used to inform media outlets, students and key stakeholders on the state of diverse digital issues in the country such as:

  • Social network uses of the Uruguayan population (presented to the European Union’s Communication officers in Uruguay)
  • Humor-related uses and searches online (through the )
  • Internet and e-commerce uses’ adequate measurement: issues and solutions (presented at the Metrics Seminar at Uruguayan Interactive Advertising Bureau)
  • Cyber-safety (communicated in a paper in review; also in )
  • Internet and e-commerce uses’ adequate measurement: issues and solutions (presented at the Metrics Seminar at Uruguayan Interactive Advertising Bureau)
  • E-government-related digital inequalities (book chapter accepted for publication; presented at the )  
  • The development of pre-grade and grade courses on Internet & Society, and ICT and Public Policies
  • WIP + DiSTO Uy’s findings were also presented at the 2019 American Sociology Association’s CITAM Media Sociology Preconference in New York. The presentation was based on the study “Determinants