Measuring Cyber Resilience in Middle School Students: Development and Validation of a Scale

Date

2026-05-01

Author

İstanbullu, Aslıhan
Delialioğlu, Ömer

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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The increasing integration of digital technologies into students’ daily lives has intensified middle school students’ exposure to cyber risks, highlighting cyber resilience as a critical competency in contemporary education. This study aims to develop a valid and reliable measurement instrument to assess the cyber resilience capacity of middle school students in the digital age. Grounded in resilience theory and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, the research introduces the Cyber Resilience Scale (CRS) for students aged 11–14. The scale development process followed systematic methodological procedures. An initial pool of 65 items was generated based on an extensive literature review and the five core functions of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework: Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover. Content validity was ensured through expert review, followed by pilot testing to confirm clarity and age appropriateness. Data were collected from 767 middle school students and analyzed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to identify the underlying factor structure. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was then conducted to validate the model. The results supported a five-factor structure consistent with the theoretical framework. The final version of the CRS consists of 43 items and explains 59.88% of the total variance. Reliability analyses indicated strong internal consistency, with a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.940 for the overall scale and values ranging from 0.902 to 0.930 for the subscales. Overall, the findings demonstrate that the CRS can support educational practices aimed at strengthening students’ ability to manage digital risks.

Subject Keywords

cyber resilience, digital resilience, digital safety, middle school students, psychometric validation, scale development

URI

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=105037752673&origin=inward
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/119262

Collections

Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technology, Article