Measuring Psychometric Analysis of Sexting Prevention Competencies among Social Media Users in Malaysia

The surge in the utilisation of social media has brought about new challenges, with one of the most critical concerns being the rise of sexting behaviours among social media users. The skills necessary to use social media programs effectively are the subject of various questions and concerns. Therefore, it is crucial for social media users to possess sexting prevention competencies in navigating the online world responsibly. The objective of this article is to develop and validate a psychometric scale to measure sexting prevention competencies among social media users in Malaysia. The results of the analysis based on a survey conducted among 412 social media users from five states in Malaysia which are Perlis, Selangor, Melaka, Pahang, and Sarawak. The Sexting Prevention Competencies scale instruments are developed from the digital citizenship framework by Ribble (2015) to test the value of sexting prevention competencies of social media users through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and the establishment of the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) Model of Sexting Prevention Competencies Scale. Factor analysis solves the challenge of determining the number of constructs needed to explain a set of measures' relationships. Findings show that multi-dimensional model of sexting prevention competencies has achieved convergence validity based on significant relationship variables. These extracted factors also have good discriminant validity. Therefore, in the context of Malaysian social media users, the instruments that were constructed were valid and trustworthy for accessing the targeted variables.