Rasch analysis of students' attitude towards Social Media and their intention to engage in cyberbullying behaviours

The Internet has become ubiquitous among the current generation of students. With the introduction of the Social Media, students now come to perceive that they own a piece "real estate" in cyberspace, in contrast to the earlier users of the Internet who were but anonymous, passive consumers of information. Unfortunately in parallel with the creativity and connectivity that students enjoy through Social Media, some are found to be engaging in risky behaviours such as cyberbullying. This has prompted researchers to try to understand the phenomenon. However thus far, the emphasis has been placed on profiling of the students while instances of cyberbullying continue to surface. There have been conjectures about what makes students behave this way; some have postulated that it is because of students' perceived anonymity in cyberspace, others have posited that it is because of their perception that the Internet is not regulated. In this study, the authors explore these conjectures through the five dimensions of anonymity, lack of regulation, lack of physical cues, availability of audience, and freedom of expression in cyberspace. A total of 407 students in a local polytechnic were surveyed and their raw scores ran through Rasch analysis before further statistical analyses of correlation. The findings provided insights that are sometimes surprising and sometimes contradictory to the literature and our intuitions about how they would/should behave. It is apparent that students' concepts of acceptable behaviours in cyberspace remain fuzzy and their de-linking of cyberspace from the real world has affected what they think can be done in cyberspace.