The development and validation of a scale to measure university teachers' attitude towards ethical use of information technology for a sustainable education

Abstract

A self-administered measurement tool was developed and validated to provide data regarding ethical attitude of university teachers for a sustainable education. The research was based on several factors involved in forming attitudes towards the unethical information technology use. The sample: 334 Romanian teachers' respondents who teach in the higher education system contributed to this research. A successions of factor analyses and structural equation modeling showed that a second-order model is a good fit for experimental data (χ2/df = 1.75, comparative fit index = 0.958, root mean square error of approximation = 0.045), however the partial least square (PLS-SEM) CFA approach revealed higher scores of factor loadings, implying the best fit to the model. This research suggested a structural model of ethical attitude of university teachers, composed by four factors measured by 13 indices. The results demonstrated that PLS-SEM CFA is appropriate for creating a valid structural model to measure university teachers' ICT ethical attitude. The current research predicted a theoretical contribution to the field of ethical attitude of university teachers within a sustainable education context.