Predictive Validity of a Cybercrime Awareness Tool: The Case of Senior High School Students in a Philippine Secondary School

Abstract

The advent of technology paves for a better understanding of the various realities the world contains. However, misuse of these instruments’ impacts people's way of living and education, especially in the new normal. Thus, an analysis was carried out to classify cybercrime awareness indicators as viewed by senior high school students at Dolores National High School using a researcher-developed unidimensional questionnaire. An 18-item Likert scale researcher-developed questionnaire, termed Cybercrime Awareness Tool (CcAT), was administered to a total of 200 students, with 50 respondents per senior high school strands using Google Form. The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) also known as Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was applied to the collected data which gave rise to four factors named; 1) Awareness on Phishing, 2) Awareness on Spamming, 3) Perceived effectiveness of antivirus software, and 4) Bullying on the web. The CcAQ was also found to have adequate internal consistency of .823 Cronbach alpha for the overall instrument, and subscale alphas ranging from .772 to .858. The multivariate analysis of variance on the interaction of sex and senior highs school strand showed a significant link to the respondents' cybercrime awareness. Hence, the researchers recommend this tool to assess schools' cybercrime awareness on the four factors.
 Keywords: Cybercrime Awareness, Exploratory Factor Analysis, Senior High School Strands