Investigation of University Students' Online Unethical Behaviors

Ethics is a philosophical discipline that has a very long history and deals with the compliance of individuals or avoidance behaviors entirely and has many subheadings. Ethical problems created by computer technologies are examined under computer or informatics ethics. Computer ethics is defined as a dynamic and complex field of study that analyzes the relationship between facts, conceptualizations, policies, values and instantly developing computer technologies. Computer ethics are generally categorized under the ownership, accuracy, access and privacy topics. This study aims to investigate the relationship between university students' online unethical behavior and their gender, educational status, and ethics course experience. A total of 530 university students, 269 female and 261 male, constitute the study group of the research conducted with the correlational study model. Research data were collected through the "Online Unethical Behaviors Scale." Independent samples t-test were used in the analysis of the data. The t-tests revealed a significant correlation between gender and online unethical behavior. It was also concluded that there was no significant correlation between online unethical behavior and ethics course experience and educational status. The findings were discussed within the framework of the literature, and suggestions were presented. [For the complete volume, "Proceedings of International Conference on Social and Education Sciences (IConSES) (Chicago, Illinois, October 15-18, 2020). Volume 1," see ED626033.]