Development of a protection motivation theory based questionnaire for measuring parental digital security practice in Malaysia / Muhd Zulfadli Hafiz Ismail
Knowledge on parental digital security, which is the parental practice of maintaining the safety of their children online, is crucial to produce good digital citizens. Protection motivation theory (PMT) is a useful theoretical model for explaining protective behaviour and understanding this pra...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Published: |
2020
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| Online Access: | http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/13246/4/zulfadli.pdf http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/13246/ |
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| Summary: | Knowledge on parental digital security, which is the parental practice of
maintaining the safety of their children online, is crucial to produce good digital citizens.
Protection motivation theory (PMT) is a useful theoretical model for explaining
protective behaviour and understanding this practice. Many studies and tools for
exploring protective behaviour have been produced based on PMT, but there is no
assessment tool available for assessing parents’ digital security practice in the Malaysian
context. Thus, the development of an assessment tool that reflects Malaysian parents’
digital security practice based on established frameworks such as the PMT is essential.
Therefore, this study attempted to develop a PMT-based instrument for measuring the
digital security practice of Malaysian parents and to explain the factors that determine
these practices based on the PMT domains. The study was conducted over 2 years from
January 2018 to December 2019. It consisted of three major phases: item development,
scale development and scale evaluation. Item development consisted of domain
identification, item generation, content validity and translation, and involved a systematic
review of the literature and engagement with experts and stakeholders. Scale development
focused on pretesting, test-retest reliability and pilot testing for exploratory factor
analysis. Scale evaluation involved path analysis of the domains and confirmatory factor
analysis. The scale development and scale evaluation phases involved Malaysian parents
with children below 18-years-old who were selected through purposive sampling, which
involved two government clinics in Selangor, three private clinics, one each in Selangor,
Perlis and Sabah, and three workplaces in the Klang Valley. The output item development
was a bilingual 54-item questionnaire covering seven domains: perceived susceptibility,
perceived severity, perceived self-efficacy, perceived response efficacy, perceived
maladaptive reward, perceived response cost and parental digital security practice. Scale
development resulted in three items being dropped due to poor reliability and poor
iv
loading, and nine domains: perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived self�efficacy, perceived response efficacy, perceived tangible cost, perceived psychological
cost, perceived maladaptive reward, discursive digital security practice and control
digital security practice. In the scale evaluation phase, the remaining 51 items showed
good discriminant and convergent validity, and both measurement and structural model
assessment of the domains were adequate. Further analysis revealed that perceived self�efficacy (β= 0.30, p < 0.001), perceived response efficacy (β= 0.20, p=0.01) and perceived
maladaptive reward (β=-0.20, p < 0.001) to be significant determinants of parental digital
security practice. The model was able to explain 34% variation of parental digital security
practice. The study contributes to knowledge by producing a validated instrument for
measuring parental digital security practice in Malaysia. It also identifies the major
determinants of parental digital security practice based on the PMT domains. The
validated instrument has the potential to be utilised further to understand cyber parenting
practices in general. The study also highlights that efforts need to be made to improve
parental efficacy and reduce their perceived maladaptive rewards to keep their children
safe online because these factors have a major influence on the effectiveness of parental
digital security practice.
Keywords: Cyber parenting, digital, citizenship, security, protection motivation theory. |
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