An analysis of information security awareness level among middle school students

This study aims to determine and assess the information security awareness levels of middle school students in terms of different variables. In this respect, the research is a descriptive research within the scope of survey model. In this study the information security levels are compared according to independent variables such as gender, parental educational level and the amount of time spent online per day or on the applications that require internet usage. 43 middle schools affiliated to the Ministry of Education, in Sincan district of Ankara constitutes as the population and 614 students studying in 6 state schools affiliated to the Ministry of Education, in Sincan district of Ankara during the 2020-2021 academic year constitutes as the sample of this study. To collect data about the different variables discussed, a "Personal Data Form" developed by the researcher was used. Besides the "Information Security Awareness Scale" of 36 items and 3 factors developed by Güldüren, Çetinkaya and Keser (2016) was used to determine the information security awareness levels of the middle schools students. The "Information Security Awareness Scale" was applied in the present study. Considering the difference between the original sample and the sample of the present study, it is decided to redo the validation and reliability study. As a result of the analysis done, the scale model which is consisted of 34 items and 3 factors were used leaving out 2 items. Within the research context, descriptive statistics related to the factor scores and the total score (minimum, maximum, average, standard deviation) were calculated to determine the information security awareness levels of middle school students. While Independent Samples t-test was used to compare two groups, One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used when comparing more than two groups. In the cases where variance analysis was significant, Tukey Multiple Comparison test was used to determine between which groups a significant different exists. Findings indicate that protection of personal data was more important for students while attacks and threats were the least important factors. It is observed that the information security awareness levels of girls are higher compared to boys. It is also observed that the protection of personal data factor differs depending on the education levels of the mothers. The information security awareness levels of the students whose mothers are highschool graduates are observed higher that those whose mothers are primary school graduates. Yet, no significant difference was found in terms of their daily usage of the internet and parental educational levels.