A research on the relationship between university students' digital literacy levels and information ethics attitudes

Social developments in information technologies are observed and provide benefits in education and training activities, as in life. Intensive use of technology not only benefits the education and training system, it also arises some new ethical problems. In this context, in order to prevent unethical problems, students must have high digital literacy levels and skills. This research is a quantitative study in the relational screening model that aims to determine the relationship between digital literacy levels and informatics ethics attitudes of Mersin University Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Department of Economics students and Faculty of Engineering, Computer Engineering students. In this context, the data set of the research consists of the answers obtained from 363 students included in the sample. In the research, the "Digital Literacy Scale" adapted to Turkish by Hamutoğlu, Güngören, Uyanık and Erdoğan (2017) and the "Attitude Scale towards Information Ethics Values" developed by Çelik and Gündoğdu (2019) were used. As a result of the findings obtained from the students participating in the research, it was determined that there was a low, positive and insignificant relationship between digital literacy levels and attitudes towards information technology ethics values. When the relationship between the two scales was evaluated, it was concluded that the highest relationship was between the attitude dimension of digital literacy and the cyberbully dimension of attitude towards IT ethics values.