Development of Virtual World Risk Perception Scale (VWRPS)

Abstract

The aim of this study is to develop a valid and reliable scale to identify the risk situations perceived by high school students in different high schools in the context of virtual environments (social media, virtual networks), which are important in the field of Information Technologies. By examining the studies in domestic and foreign literature, more than 250 precursors were prepared and 34 items were determined by grouping and transforming into scale expression. The scale was applied to 390 high school students in various high schools in the academic year of 2016-2017. Twenty-six items were collected with five factorial factors and sufficient factor loadings (> .40) as the result of the exploratory factor analysis. The validity of the construct validity study, which measures a general structure (virtual risk perception) and five sub-dimensions named by experts (virtual corruption, virtual depreciation, virtual possibility, virtual opportunity and virtual awareness). Cronbach Alpha, Guttmann Split Half and Sperman Brown values were calculated for the reliability of the whole scale and subscales. As a result, it is expected that the Virtual World Risk Perception Scale (VWRPS), which is composed of five sub-factors and 26 items, is determined to be valid and reliable on the basis of the analyzes made, is a scale that is open to development, usable and filling the void.