# Development of Digital Competence for Research
## 4 Discussion
### Hypothesis Contrast  
The fourth and last specific objective consisted of determining the effect that the implementation of a course designed with the modality of blended learning would have in each one of the dimensions of digital competency for the research for a group of engineering university students. This objective, which is derived from the other research objectives, is destined to contrast with the research hypotheses previously cited. The instruments for cognitive, procedural, and attitudinal dimensions of digital competence for specially designed research were applied to the passive control and the experimental groups, before and after the intervention, according to that established with methodological design. It is worth pointing out that both groups tried to integrate the same number of participants so that, like that performed by [PERSON] and [PERSON] [36], it would eliminate the possibility that the difference would alter the results, as can be supposed of [PERSON] et al. [37] and [PERSON]'s [32] research. Initially, the results of the pre-test (Table 6) allowed us to demonstrate that before the intervention, the passive control group had greater development in its digital competency for the investigation, based on the estimation of the performance averages in each one of the instruments with the DCR sample. The average performance of the experimental group was inferior in all aspects of digital competency for research, even in the procedural dimension (\(p=0.039\)), with an effect of great magnitude, causing a medium-sized effect on the global score (d = \(-0.677\)). In this same order of ideas, in agreement with what [PERSON] [17] carried out, we decided to select (those with) the lowest performance in the sample as the experimental group in order not to favor intervention, avoiding the results from being altered by knowledge and previous abilities. As in the studies of [PERSON] and [PERSON] [38] and [PERSON] et al. [37], which omitted the control of this effect due to the fact that it could cause confusion or a bad interpretation of the results and that establishing a correlation attribute to the impact, just through intervention. At the end of the implementation of the course designed with the blended learning modality with the experimental group, a post-test was administered that again was applied to both groups, and diametrically opposed results were obtained. The average value of the experimental group was superior to that of the passive control group in the three instruments that measure digital competence for research. Even though in the pre-test the experimental group average was close (\(-0.03\)) to the passive control group, for the post-test, its development achieved a significant difference (\(p=0.044\)) as a result of the intervention, considering a large-size effect (d = \(0.969\)). In the attitudinal dimension of DCR, we obtained similar results. While the experimental group prior to the intervention had a medium that was slightly inferior to that of the passive control group (\(-0.13\)), once the application was concluded, the difference in average values increased overwhelmingly (2.33), considering the same significance order (\(p=0.045\)) as in the cognitive dimension, and with a size of effect (d = \(0.957\)) that is just as big, due to the significant decrease in the attitudinal dimension in the passive control group (\(p=0.031\)). This last result concurs with that presented by [PERSON] [29] regarding a possible unfavorable disposition of the participants in the second application of the sample, which demands the strategy example to maintain its interest. On the other hand, the procedural dimension obtained a difference with a medium effect size (d = 0.535), which turned out not to be significant (\(p\) = 0.247), although the growth of its average value regarding the passive control group (1.0) was more than that obtained in the cognitive dimension (0.83), where it was considered significant.