The Q1 journal Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans has published an article by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ekaterina Markova and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gabriela Yordanova, dedicated to public attitudes towards artificial intelligence (AI) and self-assessed AI literacy in Bulgaria. The study used two internationally validated instruments – General Attitudes toward Artificial Intelligence Scale (GAAIS) and Meta AI Literacy Scale (MAILS) – and was conducted among 1006 adult respondents as part of a national multi-stage omnibus survey. This is the first large-scale evaluation of the GAAIS and MAILS measurement instruments for attitudes and literacy towards AI in Eastern Europe.
The results show that education and age are significant predictors of AI literacy, while positive attitudes also vary by gender. Negative attitudes are more evenly distributed, reflecting broader public concerns. Both instruments show high internal reliability in face-to-face interview conditions, confirming their applicability beyond online surveys. The study demonstrates the benefits of their parallel implementation and proposes a multidimensional approach to measuring societal readiness for AI that can serve as a basis for future international and policy research.
The article also cites data from the pan-European SHARE survey, which reveals a clear age-related decline in digital skills, especially among people over 75, with important implications for access to AI technologies.
Positive attitudes towards AI are more common among men, the younger and the more educated, while concerns and scepticism are evenly distributed across all social groups. The authors emphasize that without targeted policies to increase skills among the older and less educated, technological progress may deepen social inequalities.
The publication is open access and contributes to the international methodological validation of both tools, creating a basis for future comparative research and policies on digital inclusion.
Following the tradition of the work of the National Infrastructure SHARE ERIC Bulgaria, the anonymized data from the study are available with open access on the Zenodo platform and the Bulgarian Open Science Portal, allowing their free use for academic and research purposes.
The article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbah.2025.100193
The database is here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16745477
