Cyber security fear appeals:unexpectedly complicated

Cyber security researchers are starting to experiment with fear appeals, with a wide variety of designs and reported efficaciousness. This makes it hard to derive recommendations for designing and deploying these interventions. We thus reviewed the wider fear appeal literature to arrive at a set of guidelines to assist cyber security researchers. Our review revealed a degree of dissent about whether or not fear appeals are indeed helpful and advisable. Our review also revealed a wide range of fear appeal experimental designs, in both cyber and other domains, which confirms the need for some standardized guidelines to inform practice in this respect. We propose a protocol for carrying out fear appeal experiments, and we review a sample of cyber security fear appeal studies, via this lens, to provide a snapshot of the current state of play. We hope the proposed experimental protocol will prove helpful to those who wish to engage in future cyber security fear appeal research

Designing assessments and LMS that foster student well-being in a fully virtual learning environment during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic: A longitudinal study

A longitudinal study on designing assessments and LMS that foster student well-being in a fully virtual learning environment during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic: preliminary findings

Compliance with security guidelines in teenagers

What drives teenagers to comply with computer password guidelines? Using an extended form of protection motivation theory (PMT) (Rogers, 1983), we found that even if teenage computer users believe they are susceptible to being hacked, or that being hacked would be detrimental, it has no bearing on their password choices. Other motives outside of PMT also drive teenage security behaviour. Personal norms fully mediate the relationship between the perceived severity of threat and compliance intentions such that perceived severity is not sufficient to encourage compliance. Teenagers must actually feel obligated to comply. While personal norms may encourage compliance, concerns about feeling embarrassed or ashamed if their social media accounts are hacked into actually encourages compliance. On the other hand, peer influence, such as the fear of being teased about someone hacking into their account, discourages compliance. Our study contributes to understanding early security practices and highlights potential differences between adult and teenage behaviours to consider in future studies. For example, our findings suggest that password security guidelines alone will not suffice to ensure teenage compliance; they may need enforced password rules at the authentication level to eliminate any opportunity to violate password rules. Our study will benefit children and parents as well as organizations that have changed work practices to enable employees to work from home, but which places children in danger of clicking on malicious links on their parents’ computers. To our knowledge, this is the first password security study that applies PMT to examine computer-based security behaviours in teenagers

Effectiveness of protection motivation theory based: Password hygiene training programme for youth media literacy education

This study adopts an experimental design to investigate the effectiveness of a password hygiene training programme. The password hygiene training programme adopted the Protection Motivation Theory’s framework in its development, and was delivered online to 84 students aged 13 to 16. Strength of password measures, such as time taken, and number of tries required, to crack the password, were administered pre and post intervention. The findings revealed that the password hygiene training programme was effective in changing actual password setting behaviour. This study also provided hints on which perceptual changes, based on the theory’s framework, was most influential in the exercise

Creating supportive online learning environment and training experiences: The future of life-long learning for older adults?

Drawing on lessons learned from research prior to COVID-19 and our study since the onset of the pandemic in 2020, we discuss insights into how older adults have adjusted to living in technologically advanced societies like Singapore. In this seminar we share lessons learned from our research, interviews with older adults as well as our experience training older adults how to use technology. We discuss key factors that influence use of ICT and new media in older adults and the role these factors play in providing better opportunity for life-long learning and quality of life. Recognizing the diverse social contexts of older adults’ use of technology, their interests and motivations, we share why some older adults use or do not use available ICT and new media apps to engage in learning and leisure activities. The session will conclude with guidelines on how to strengthen media literacy skills (such as tackling online misinformation), and how to better design, customize, and encourage older adults’ online learning and improve training experiences for them

The role of ICT and new media in improving older adults’ quality of life: Mixed methods

Our proposed study seeks to investigate how technology can improve quality of life in older people. In particular, we aim to advance our understanding of the role ICT and new media-related leisure activities such as social networking, mental games and language learning apps play as a source of meaning and well-being in older people. In doing so, we seek to identify key characteristics of the ICT and new media-related leisure activities that provide a source of wellbeing to older people, and the social norms and attitudes that motivate them to adopt and domesticate these technologies. We address three key questions. First, what kinds of leisure activities older people consider more desirable than others, and what make these leisure activities desirable. Second, we explore how social norms, technology attitudes and dispositions encourage or discourage older Asians’ to participate in the identified leisure activities. Third, we seek to identify individual characteristics beyond social norms, technology attitudes and dispositions, that differentiate elderly ICT and new media users and non-users, and how non-users can be motivated to adopt ICT and new media related leisure activities in their pursuit for well-being. A mixed method, longitudinal approach is proposed: (a) a survey to determine attitudes, norms, and other salient variables, (b) focus groups and (c) interviews of older people over the age of 55, in Asia. This will allow us to investigate the long-term effects of ICT and new media leisure activities on well-being and the extent of their adoption in their domestic life

Value hierarchies across cultures: Taking a similarities perspective

Beyond the striking differences in the value priorities of groups is a surprisingly widespread consensus regarding the hierarchical order of values. Average value hierarchies of representative and near representative samples from 13 nations exhibit a similar pattern that replicates with school teachers in 56 nations and college students in 54 nations. Benevolence, self-direction. and universalism values are consistently most important; power, tradition, and stimulation values are least important; and security, conformity, achievement, and hedonism are in between. Value hierarchies of 83% of samples correlate at least .80 with this pan-cultural hierarchy. To explain the pan-cultural hierarchy, the authors discuss its adaptive functions in meeting the requirements of successful societal functioning. The authors demonstrate, with data from Singapore and the United States, that correctly interpreting the value hierarchies of groups requires comparison with the pan-cultural normative baseline

Graduate employability concerns amidst a crisis: Student perspectives from Singapore on COVID-19

With the ongoing challenges of COVID-19, global economies continue to face uncertainties, widespread workforce volatility and employment challenges. During a sustained crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, university students’ self-perceptions about their employability and future career choices in their chosen industry sectors may be affected. Therefore, this study investigates graduate employability concerns and the perceptions of undergraduate students regarding employment prospects and future job security confidence in their disciplines’ industry sectors in light of this global crisis. Through the employment of a mixed methods design, the study investigates the perceptions of graduating students from three disciplines in Singapore: Tourism, Communications and Information Technology. The findings indicate that COVID-19 had a positive impact on perceptions of jobs that could be performed from home and those in essential services. Concurrently, there were notable variances in the students’ perceptions regarding career prospects and job security confidence across the three disciplines with regard to the impact of the crisis on their industry sectors in general and themselves individually