Cybercrime Risk Fear Among University Students’ Social Networking Sites: Validity and Reliability.

Social networking sites and other media applications have been admitted as compulsive communication outlets. Their vulnerability and various risks involved, these social media platforms are easy sources to commit cybercrimes. The main purpose of this study was to test the structure of fear of cybercrime among users of social networks. The sample consisted of 612 university students who used social networking sites. The snowball sampling technique was used to drive sample of the study. The study utilized a descriptive approach. An electronic Google form comprising 15 items with a focus on fear of crime was administered after taking students’ informed consent. MPLUS and IBM SPSS were used to analyze data. The study tested three models of scale structure including the exploratory factor analysis to generate models. These models were then verified by confirmatory factor analysis. The three-factor model excelled exploratory and confirmatory in terms of goodness-of-fit indicators. The study recommends applying the scale with caution in future because of the low variance explained by using the scale, which reached 30.7%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]