Validation of a cybercrime awareness scale in Peruvian university students

Abstract

This article presents an evaluation to classify cybercrime indicator awareness in students of three universities in Peru. To this end, it applied a twenty-item Likert scale questionnaire using Google Forms to a total of 372 students. Exploratory factor analysis was applied to the data collected, resulting in four factors: 1) phishing awareness, 2) spamming awareness, 3) antivirus software effectiveness, and 4) web bullying. The cybercrime awareness scale showed adequate internal consistency, presenting .892 in Cronbach's alpha for the overall instrument and a range from .782 to .861 in the subscales' alphas, thus, making it possible to determine the validity and reliability of the proposed scale.