Development and Psychometric Analysis of Cyber Ethics Instrument (CEI)

Abstract

This study developed and validated the psychometric properties of a new instrument, cyber ethics instrument (CEI), for assessing cyber ethics. Items related to cyber ethics were generated from a review of both scholarly and practitioner literature for the development of the instrument. The instrument was administered to university students. A sample of 503 responses was used for exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to extract the factor structure. The results of EFA suggested a six-factor structure (cyber privacy, computer ethics, academic integrity, intellectual property, netiquette, cyber safety), explaining 67.7% of the total variance. The results of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) showed acceptable model fit indices. Therefore, the results established the viability of CEI for measuring cyber ethics. The instrument is essential for advancing the field of cyber ethics research as it will serve as a tool educators and researchers can use to measure the current stage of cyber ethics. The results obtained from using CEI can help identify and recommend cyber ethics interventions.