Determining the cyber security awareness of secondary students a scale development study

Today, people have become more dependent on technology than ever before. Despite society's positive perception of modern developments, cybersecurity threats brought by technology are also a real danger. With the increase in the use of information and communication technologies during the pandemic period, the number of cyber attacks has also increased. Regardless of age, all users are exposed to various security risks while spending time on the Internet. The end users who are most exposed to these risks are especially young users. For this reason, it is very important for users to gain cybersecurity awareness at an early age. A cyber security awareness scale is needed to analyze the current cyber security awareness of young users. In line with this need, it was aimed to develop a scale to determine the cyber security awareness levels of secondary school students and to examine their cyber security awareness in terms of different variables. The research consists of two stages. In the first stage, a cyber security awareness scale was developed for secondary school students. In the scale development process, the survey method, which is one of the quantitative research methods, was used. The study group of the research consists of 1,456 students studying in secondary schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in Amasya in the 2021-2022 academic year. As a result of the Exploratory Factor Analysis conducted for 854 people, it was determined that the scale consisted of 25 items and 4 sub-dimensions (Password Security, Preventive Measures, Malware Awareness and Protection of Personal Privacy). As a result of the confirmatory factor analysis performed on 602 people, the 4-factor structure was confirmed. While Cronbach's alpha value for the entire scale is 0.87, Password Security Sub-Dimension is 0.92, Preventive Measures Sub-Dimension is 0.82, Malware Awareness Sub-Dimension is 0.85, and Personal Privacy Protection Sub-Dimension is 0.83. In the second stage of the study, the cyber security awareness of secondary school students was examined in terms of different variables. The study group of the research consists of 530 students studying in secondary schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in the province of Amasya in the 2022-2023 academic year. The descriptive survey model was used as the research model. The independent t-test was used to analyze the cyber security awareness according to the gender variable on the data obtained as a result of the research, and the ANOVA test was applied to the analysis according to the class levels and daily internet usage times. In the Preventive Measures sub-dimension, the differences by gender were found to be statistically significant in favor of male students, and a significant difference was found between the 8th and 6th grades at the grade level.