A model of factors affecting cyber bullying behaviors among university students

Abstract

This paper attempts to mitigate this gap within the literature concerning the use of social media for cyber engagement (CE) among students. Since students often become upset when network providers intervene, this paper aims to develop a model to measure ethics issues related to engagement with social media. The conducted survey examines social media use with regard to cyber engagement, cyberbullying behaviors, and being bullied, harassed, and stalked. To achieve the objective, this paper employed a questionnaire as the main data collection method and distributed it to 242 students, all of whom use social media. The findings were obtained via a quantitative research method, structural equation modeling, and partial least squares. The findings from our empirical study indicate that the assessment of discriminant validity has become an extensively acknowledged requirement for the analysis of latent variables' relationships. Goodness of fit indices demonstrates a good fit of the model. Roughly more than half of students indicated they had been bullied, harassed, and stalked online. The proposed model will help campus administration and decision makers to formulate strategies that can significantly reduce cyber harassment among students.