Cybersecurity, Safety, & Privacy Concerns of Student
Support Structure for Information and Communication
Technologies in Online Education
FAIZA TAZI, University of Denver, USA
SUNNY SHRESTHA, University of Denver, USA
SANCHARI DAS, University of Denver, USA
COVID-19 has created a dramatic paradigm shift in education methods, which forced schools and universities to
abandon the usual in-person education in favor of online education modules. Such a shift has extended the time
and use of internet communication technologies (ICTs) by most, making online education platforms primary
cyberattack targets. In this context, this study aims to explore parents, educators, and other caregivers’ 1
concerns about online education and the cybersecurity of their children and students. Thus, we conducted a
survey-based study with 983 participants recruited through popular crowdsourcing platforms: MTurk and
Prolific. Our results indicate a lack of technical support following cyber safety that the students received with
the sudden transition to online education. Over 31% of our participants claimed that they never or rarely
receive any communication related to cyber safety from the students’ educational institutions. Additionally,
our analysis shows that the student support structure needs to be trained and informed on the threats faced by
children online and on the ways to mitigate these threats. Finally, we find a statistically significant difference
between parents, educators, and other caregivers regarding their perceptions of children’s online privacy and
cyber safety. We conclude this work by providing actionable recommendations to promote privacy-preserving
and digitally secure online education.
CCS Concepts: • Security and privacy → Social aspects of security and privacy; Privacy protections;
Usability in security and privacy; • Social and professional topics → User characteristics.
Additional Key Words and Phrases: Online Education, Children Cyber Safety, Online Education Privacy,
Remote Learning, Remote Learning Cybersecurity, ICTs, Covid-19.
ACM Reference Format:
Faiza Tazi, Sunny Shrestha, and Sanchari Das. 2023. Cybersecurity, Safety, & Privacy Concerns of Student
Support Structure for Information and Communication Technologies in Online Education. Proc. ACM Hum.Comput. Interact. 7, CSCW2, Article 264 (October 2023), 40 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3610055
1
INTRODUCTION
The rapid advancement in technology and the accessibility of the internet have enriched our
living experience. One such area is internet communication technologies’ (ICTs) involvement in
the education sector which has extended to provide online education to students from diverse
backgrounds. With better technology and network reliability, the education system has slowly
1 we
will cumulatively refer to them as the student support structure
Authors’ addresses: Faiza Tazi, Faiza.Tazi@du.edu, University of Denver, 2199 S University Blvd, Denver, Colorado, USA,
80208; Sunny Shrestha, sunny.shrestha@du.edu, University of Denver, 2199 S University Blvd, Denver, Colorado, USA,
80208; Sanchari Das, Sanchari.Das@du.edu, University of Denver, 2199 S University Blvd, Denver, Colorado, USA, 80208.
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moved toward the digital format. This gradual shift was pushed into rapid advancement when
COVID-19 hit the world [13]. With enforced lockdowns and social distancing policies, traditional
classes are now live stream (LS) based learning mode [14, 26]. This form of digital learning is also
referred to as online education or remote learning. To summarize, online education can be defined
as the implementation of ICTs in the mechanism through which education is delivered, either
synchronously or asynchronously, through the internet with the aid of digital technology tools and
platforms [18, 34].
The transition from a physical classroom to a digital one during the COVID-19 pandemic
was fraught with minimal resources, a technological knowledge gap, a lack of support from the
government, and vast socioeconomic disparity [4]. Nevertheless, many educational institutions
could take on this task and execute it, albeit with some difficulties. The availability of technology
and infrastructure to support such a massive move helped preserve the learning progress of many
students [31]. However, most families and educators across the US struggled to keep up with the
online education format [24]. Many parents, educators, and other caregivers who form the student
support structure had to overcome network issues, technical errors, and limited knowledge of
the platform to create an engaging virtual learning environment. For working parents, this was
a Herculean task as they were forced to continue their work from home while overseeing their
children [2]. Online education was a challenging experience for educators and other caregivers as
well. Similarly, students had to spend much of their time in front of the devices to receive education
and interact with peers and, after that, had to invest more time trying to adjust to new learning
formats [1, 3]. As most of the population was spending time online interacting with new technology
platforms and tools, the target pool for cybercrime was at an all-time high [16, 47].
Most of the population online was unfamiliar with these technological tools and lacked important
cybersecurity knowledge. In July 2019, hackers held technology systems at Monroe College in NY
at ransom for $2 million in bitcoin as reported in the news2 . In a similar cyberattack incident, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation notified Pearson, a British educational software, of a data breach
that exposed sensitive information like names, date of births and email address of student from
more than 13000 school and university accounts3 . The pandemic has highlighted the need for
cybersecurity education and awareness in the general population. Students, especially those under
the legal age, are more vulnerable to online threats and attacks, as they are unable to understand
the severity of cybercrimes and equally unable to prevent or resolve such attacks [7]. The student
support structure involving the parents, educators, and other caregivers is thus in a critical position
to make decisions to safeguard the privacy and security of students. Traditionally, the student
support structure has dealt with such risks by limiting students’ interaction with technology, which
could not be achieved during the pandemic as the students needed to be online for the better part
of the day for education, entertainment, and social engagement.
Apart from finding innovative ways to support the students’ mental health during such sudden
exposure to higher digital threats, their support structure also needs to monitor the platforms
to prevent any cyber threats and attacks [9, 42]. For example, an adult supervisor might notice
activities and risks that a younger individual might not suspect as a threat. In this way, the student
support structure is in an excellent position to prevent cyber threats and mitigate risks. However,
this is only possible if they are educated and aware of cybersecurity risks [21]. Thus, it is essential to
understand the perspectives of parents, educators, and other caregivers when we evaluate students’
security and privacy in an online learning system. Unfortunately, however, this population is
severely understudied.
2 https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/29/hackers-are-targeting-colleges-for-students-data.html
3 https://www.wsj.com/articles/pearson-hack-exposed-details-on-thousands-of-u-s-students-11564619001
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To this aid, we conducted a survey-based analysis to understand the student support structure’s
cybersecurity, safety, and privacy risk perceptions. The survey was deployed on two prominent
crowdsourcing platforms, MTurk and Prolific, where we collected data from 1036 participants.
Through this study, we aim to answer the following research questions:
• RQ1: How do educators, parents, and other caregivers perceive cybersecurity, cyber safety, and
privacy threats concerning their children and students with online education?
• RQ2: To what extent is the communication between the parties accountable for students’ cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy reliable and efficient?
• RQ3: What are the individual factors that contribute to the attitudes of parents, educators,
and other caregivers towards cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy of children in the online
education context?
Our study shows that the majority (76.91%) of our participants are aware of the importance of
cybersecurity to their students and children regardless of their age group, although the importance
of age-appropriate communication was repeatedly voiced by all participant groups. Our results also
reveal the importance of more cybersecurity training for the student support structure to improve
the quality of communication about the cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy risks the children
incur from being online.
Through this study, we aim to contribute to the literature by:
• Delving deeper into the perceptions and attitudes of parents, educators, and other caregivers
towards the security of the students in online education. We deem it necessary to address all
these categories forming the student support structure, seeing that they all play an essential
role in raising future generations in a safe physical and virtual environment. Furthermore,
most other studies we investigated only consider parents or educators. In contrast, we chose
to include other caregivers in our analysis for the reasons cited above and for their knowledge
and experience.
• We specifically focus on the impact of our participants’ computer and cybersecurity expertise
on their responses which in turn reflect the critical requirement of IT support and cybersecurity awareness and education for the students. This is critical to evaluate as we need to
understand the technological limitation of the student support structure, which the students
might need and seek at home and in the classroom.
• Additionally, we collected data from 1036 participants; these responses have been both
qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed to extract essential themes. The mixed-methods
approach on such a large scale is one of its kind. It has provided critical insights into the
user perception of online education while emphasizing the essential cybersecurity and safety
aspects.
In the following section 2, we detail the background work which motivated our research as
we explored further the cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy domains of the online education
module. After that, in section 3, we discuss in-depth the study design, recruitment methods, and
analysis techniques. Next, we detail the results and discuss the findings in section 4. Then, given
the results and prior work on the topic, we provide our recommendations in section 5. Finally, we
list the future extension of the work, and discuss the limitations in section 6 and in section 7, we
provide a conclusion to this study.
2
RELATED WORK
Online education has long been established as a viable form, in which the education is delivered
through the internet either in synchronous or asynchronous fashion [18, 34]. This education
delivery form has always been used on the sidelines as an alternative to traditional classroom
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learning. However, the recent onset of the pandemic, COVID-19, and subsequent lockdowns pushed
online education as a primary form of education delivery for students across the United States
and worldwide [25, 53, 56]. This sudden switch across all levels of education has forced students,
educators, parents, and caregivers to adjust their lives around this form of learning. Researchers have
been taking note of the different implications of online education [55]. However, it is imperative
to note the impact of such a shift to online modules from cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy
lenses.
Although online education has been a boon to instructors and students by allowing them to
continue their education despite the pandemic, it has also created a shift in technology usage.
Before the pandemic, online education was rarely used in the traditional classroom setting for
young children and teenagers [32]. In their research, Ali discusses how parents and educators
primarily relied on an in-person classroom set up to provide an appropriate learning environment
for their children but now have to recreate a learning environment using the ICTs that were not
traditionally designed for the educational realm [3]. This development has piqued researchers’
interest in further understanding the transition process to online education and its effect on family
dynamics. Online education methods brought classrooms home, and the student support structure
has been forced to understand and operate modern technology tools almost overnight [11]. This
new role as ‘learning agents’ has put additional strain on the student support structure, especially
on parents. In recent research, parents expressed a need for more support from educators on
setting up the online education environment and understanding how to support their children’s
learning [19]. Thus, our study aimed to analyze the student support structure’s perspectives on
online education focusing on the understudied cybersecurity, safety, and privacy lenses.
2.1
User Perception Towards Online Education
2.1.1 Parents’ Perception. Parents usually monitor their children’s “screen time” to effectively
prevent their prolonged interaction with technology [51]. In 2020, parents were forced to participate
actively in facilitating and monitoring children’s interaction with internet platforms and tools. A
study by Bansal et al. shows that many parents found the experience of online education stressful
for their children and family overall [6]. During the pandemic, parents often were the primary
facilitator of online education. As a result, they had a closer view of the pervasive nature of Zoom4
classrooms and school-mandated learning tools and platforms. Balash et al. discuss how students
perceive the online proctoring tools and the existing privacy and security concerns related to these
tools [5]. Their user study, conducted on 102 participants (72% in the age range of 18-24), discovered
that students did not trust the school-mandated proctoring tools and standalone software. Most
students found these tools to threaten their privacy and unnecessary, impacting their parents’
perception and understanding of the tools.
Prior studies show that parents prefer education in a traditional classroom rather than the online
delivery system [22, 52]. This preference is guided by the parent’s desire to keep their children
socially active, engaged in studies, and protected from cyber-related risks and harm [20]. Such
studies motivated us to investigate if this recent development of the parent-children-technology
dynamic has changed parents’ perspectives on cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy. Hence,
in this study, we delve deeper into parents’ perceptions of online education and report on their
opinions on use of these tools and software.
2.1.2 Educators’ Perception. Educators who otherwise do not have to monitor their students’
online presence, now suddenly had to conduct online classrooms, and monitor students’ online
behavior during this pandemic [12, 46]. Revilla et al. discuss the educators’ vital technological
4 https://zoom.us/
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difficulties with the sudden transition to online education [46]. Moreover, since educators played a
crucial role in the students’ interactions with technology, they could provide essential insights into
the pros and cons of online education as demonstrated in studies conducted in India [33] and Saudi
Arabia [41].
As evident in these studies, educators went through a harrowing experience as they were
thrust with the responsibility to conduct a class over video conferencing, which meant getting
familiar with the technology, being able to troubleshoot technical interruptions, keeping the
students engaged, and monitoring disruptive behaviors, all while still delivering education to
students. In addition, this experience highlighted the need for digital knowledge for parents and
educators, as the ones that did not use digital technology otherwise had a more challenging time
adjusting to online education. With online education, the student’s support structure has witnessed
different cybersecurity vulnerabilities that can jeopardize students’ well-being and privacy. Hence,
in this study, we investigate technical and cybersecurity support avenues educators have access
to and educators’ experience with these support systems. We also look into the struggles, if any,
experienced by educators in safeguarding their students’ privacy.
2.1.3 Caregivers’ Perception. Apart from parents and educators, caregivers, or kinship caregivers5
were also affected by this switch to online education over the pandemic. Here we consider all adults
other than parents, who provide care for children like grandparents or babysitters or guardians or
social care providers as caregivers. Caregivers bear similar stresses in varying degrees that parents
felt while facilitating online education for children during the pandemic [59]. Many students had
to rely on their grandparents to facilitate online education during the pandemic. Many caregivers
have a critical responsibility for children, yet their role in children’s education needs to be wellresearched. Due to the diverse nature of individuals identifying as caregivers to children, they can
provide a nuanced and different take on online education’s privacy and security aspect and its
impact on children’s overall education. However, we noted a gap in the literature evaluating the
online education perspective from the caregiver lens, which we explored through this study.
2.2
Privacy & Security Challenges
It is reported that during the COVID-19 pandemic, when most of the population relied upon online
interaction to meet daily needs, the number of cybercrimes increased by 600% [10]. Although
these crimes might affect all users equally, the scope and impact of such crimes have increased
drastically among the vulnerable population like young students, the elderly, and so on [8]. Thus,
online education platforms and technical tools are paramount to be secure and privacy-preserving.
However, the platforms widely utilized for online education worldwide were not explicitly designed
to deliver education to hundreds of thousands of children and students in a secure way [30]. Instead,
these platforms and technologies were selected for their availability, ease of use, and ability to meet
the requirements of a simulated classroom with minimum setup and time [54].
As demonstrated in the survey conducted by Balash et al., highly invasive (monitoring the
screen time, mouse movement, web browser activity) exam proctoring tools and schools-mandated
standalone software were used to facilitate online education. Although these tools looked safe due
to their association with online education platforms like Canvas, it is a third-party service with
unknown security vulnerabilities. Software and tools like these can easily be exploited, resulting
in a devastating breach of privacy [5]. The rushed move to online education with the aid of such
platforms and technology tools was not a desirable scenario for either parents or educators [15].
When it comes to online education, what is more imperative for privacy and security is that the
children’s data can be at stake due to issues of technology, parents’ and educators’ understanding of
5 https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/outofhome/kinship/about/
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the tools used, and the institutions. Thus, it is critical to understand the perception of the learning
agents.
In this study, we recruited participants through crowdsourcing platforms, MTurk 6 and Prolific 7 ,
to assess the user perception of online education from the parents’, educators’, and caregivers’
point-of-view. Crowdsourcing platforms are effective tools for studying large and diverse groups
of people in a short amount of time [29, 45]. The platforms we used in this study like Amazon
Mechanical Turk and Prolific marketplaces can reach participants from countries with varying
personal, professional, and geopolitical situations [28]. This way, we ensure that the data collected
in this study represent most of the population with access to some technology. Although we
cannot reach the population who do not interact with technology for our study, the advantages of
using crowdsourcing platforms, like the ease of use, a quick study, and access to most populations,
outweigh any limitations.
These valuable prior works have guided us to formulate the questionnaires in our survey. Through
our study, we provide a detailed view of the perceptions and experiences of parents, educators, and
caregivers regarding cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy aspects of online education. While
there are some studies available on parents’ and educators’ perspectives on online education, our
study has also focused on caregivers because they, too, played a crucial role in students’ online
education, especially when considering students that are under the care of kinship caregivers in
the absence of their parents. Furthermore, we look into the technical support provided to educators
from the privacy and security viewpoint while conducting online education and recommend more
support.
3
METHODOLOGY
In this study, we analyze online interaction and cyber safety for the education sector from the
perspectives of parents, educators, and other caregivers. To this regard, we conducted a survey-based
analysis to discern the cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy risk perceptions of the students’
support structure, including professors and teaching assistants in an online education setting.
The target population of this study is parents and caregivers of children who are still in school
and who are currently taking or have in the past taken classes in an online format, as well as
educators, including professors and teaching assistants who have worked in an online setting.
Teaching assistants were included in the educators’ category since they can impact or be part of the
decision-making process regarding cybersecurity communications, tools, and overall methods of
communication. We used power analysis with a power of 0.9 and differences of 3 to determine an
adequate sample size; through the result of this analysis, we determined that the best sample size
would be 200 participants for each category, however, we decided to try to recruit 300 participants
per category, since after data cleaning these numbers eventually decrease. As such, a total of 1141
participants were recruited from both platforms, of which 980 answers were analyzed to maintain
the quality of the data analyzed. This is due to multiple reasons, including 26 participants who did
not answer the attention check questions correctly and 132 participants who identified within one
or more of the considered categories but did not have school-aged children, or were not currently
teaching any classes. Participants were asked to answer questions for up to three age groups
of students they supported. Accordingly, educators answered questions for 391 different classes,
parents answered questions for 614 and caregivers answered questions for 536 students. The ethical
review board approves this study.
6 https://www.mturk.com/
7 https://www.prolific.co/
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Survey Design
Our questionnaire was deployed on two crowdsourcing platforms, Amazon Mechanical Turk
(MTurk) and Prolific. Both are common prominent crowdsourcing platforms for academic research.
For example, MTurk has been widely used for cybersecurity, safety, and privacy studies [35, 48, 58],
while Prolific proclaims on their website that they can offer “high-quality data, on various topics,
from a variety of different audiences” 8 . The questionnaires for both platforms were deployed on
Qualtrics. For MTurk, we collected data from the participants who had at least 98% MTurk HITs
approved and who were compliant with our inclusion and exclusion criteria. The prolific survey
was launched in multiple stages to ensure an equal final distribution from all participants and
obtain participants in all three categories. At first, the survey intended for educators was launched;
after filling the quota, the parents and the other caregivers’ surveys were launched, respectively.
Participants from both platforms were paid the compensation mentioned in the ethical review
board procedure, which was more than the state’s minimum wage. The complete questionnaire is
included in Appendix A (In the Supplementary Files).
3.1.1 Pre-screening Questionnaire and Survey Flow. The participants answered the pre-screening
questions, including age brackets and what category they identified as a parent, an educator, other
caregivers, or none. Participants less than 18 years old were disqualified since our study targets
adults who care for students who are currently or were previously enrolled in remote education
courses to understand their perspective about cybersecurity, safety, and privacy of these students.
Additionally, For the MTurk survey, our participants could identify either as a parent, an educator,
a caregiver, or a combination of these categories. If they identified as none of the categories, they
were disqualified and did not proceed with the studies. Those who carried forward answered the
questionnaire for that relevant category; however, if they identified as more than one category,
then a questionnaire from one of these categories was randomly selected. Such study design led to
an uneven distribution of the three categories. To remediate the skewness, we chose to deploy the
prolific and MTurk survey on different stages and fill the quotas for each category separately. The
multiple surveys also helped with crowdsourcing platforms’ requirements for pre-screening.
For MTurk, we had inclusion criteria of HIT Approval Rate for All Requesters HITs at greater
than 95%. Additionally, we required the participants to be Master Turkers. A Master Worker is a top
Worker of the MTurk marketplace that has been granted the Mechanical Turk Masters Qualification.
These Turkers have consistently demonstrated high success in performing a wide range of HITs
across many Requesters. The time allotted to the Turkers was one hour, and the survey batch
expired every seven days. Additionally, we limited the geographical location of the participation to
the US and had the age criteria set to 18 years though this was also a screening criterion in our
survey. The total number of requests per batch was 20. This was done for quality control of the
data collected.
For Prolific, we advertised the survey with a clear description that this study was for participants’
perception of remote learning as an educator, a parent, and a caregiver. Within the survey, we asked
the participants if they were educators, parents, caregivers, or any combination of such or none
to a student. Any participant who did not select the required identification was prohibited from
continuing the study. Although Prolific allows platform-provided filters to screen the survey-takers,
we needed more than these pre-built filters to allow us to recruit specific groups we needed for our
survey. For example, we wanted to recruit specific people who were either just parents or educators
or cared for kids in a caregiver capacity but were not parents or educators of the students they
cared for. Thus, we deployed the survey to specific groups which satisfied our requirements. We
8 https://www.prolific.co/blog/qualtrics-surveymonkey-prolific-higher-quality-data
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reviewed the submissions from the participants to verify that the recruited participants satisfied
our study criteria.
Parents and caregivers were asked to answer questions for each child enrolled in school, up to
three children. They were also prompted to choose three different age groups to answer if they
had more than three children. This serves the purpose of comparing the attitudes of parents and
caregivers toward the different age groups. These answers were then aggregated into one table for
each category, where each child had their own entry. On the other hand, educators were asked to
answer a set of questions for all the classes they were teaching as it would take a lot of work to
obtain information about every student they teach.
3.1.2 Open and Close-Ended Questions. The survey questionnaire comprised both close-ended and
open-ended questions. A combination of these questions was used since multiple-choice questions
allowed for information collection quickly and efficiently. Open-ended questions were also included
within the survey as they can provide valuable insight into significant thoughts and events relevant
to this research. However, many participants bypassed the open-ended questions, as with many
survey-based studies. The participants who answered the questions provided valuable insight used
for thematic analysis. It is also important to note that all questions except the aforementioned
pre-screening questions were optional so as not to prompt or pry for information that participants
did not feel comfortable giving, to maintain authenticity for information that participants provided
within this context and minimize the noise in the data.
3.1.3 Concluding Remarks and Expertise Evaluation. Participants were asked conventional demographic questions such as age, education, and household income. All these questions were
taken from prior works, and we ensured that we asked appropriate demographic questions and
even made edits from our pilot study with 50 participants. We also asked them questions about
their security and computer science knowledge to determine whether it impacts our participants’
attitudes since research into the negotiation of cybersecurity within a household showed that the
parents’ computer background may influence household cybersecurity practices and choices that
parents make [40]. These questions were based on research by Rajivan et al. [44]. Rajivan et al.’s
questionnaire included 17 questions sorted into four categories: Academic and professional background, computer security skills, everyday computer interactions, and security knowledge. While
the questions within this work are valid for helping to gauge participants’ computer knowledge,
time and content constraints on our survey led us to use these questions as guidelines for questions
to understand participants’ computer knowledge better. As we were also seeking to learn about
other factors, it was not prudent for our survey to include all 17 questions; thus, we implemented a
subset of it.
3.1.4 Analysis Strategies. We analyzed answers from 980 participants, which included 1541 responses pertaining to the different children. We examined the close-ended questions’ data for each
group by itself to compare the parents’, educators’, and other caregivers’ perspectives. We also
compared the grade groups to examine and measure the differences between the age groups and
whether being responsible for an older or younger child influences the perspective and attitude of
our participants towards cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy regarding students. Finally, we
explored the factors responsible for each group of participants’ perceptions of the importance of
cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy to students in the online education paradigm.
For the quantitative study, we used linear regression to explain the relationship between the
perceptions of cybersecurity importance of the student’s support system with the Likert scale
answers they provided during the survey. More details on the statistical evaluation are provided in
section 4. As mentioned above, we analyzed each category of the students’ support system. We
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used the following variables: “student’s time using ICTs” , “Frequency of cybersecurity, cyber safety
or privacy school administration communications” , “Frequency of cybersecurity or cyber safety
communication with students” , “Cyber incidents involving students” , “Perceptions of tools available
to support the cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy of students” , “Security Knowledge” as well
as “Computer Knowledge” as independent variables for all the categories analyzed in this study.
In addition, for Educators, we used an additional independent variable, namely “Frequency of
cybersecurity or cyber safety communication initiated by a parent or caregiver” .
Concerning the open-ended questions, we evaluated questions about similar subjects, such as
how our participants manage cybersecurity communications and how the school administration
manages these communications. Accordingly, we performed a thematic analysis of these responses.
The first author reviewed the open-ended questions to determine the themes of the analysis. Two
coders reviewed the responses and themed the responses for each question. Afterwards, the coders
met and reviewed each other’s coding. The final codebook reflects the themes that both coders
agreed on. The themes are demonstrated in the following tables: Table 6, Table 5, Table 4 and
Table 7.
4
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
Here we report the results of our study. First, we will provide an overview of our participants’
demographics; after that, we will note the quantitative analysis of the survey. Finally, we provide
the qualitative analysis of the survey’s open-ended questions.
4.1 Demographics
A total of 1141 participants took our survey, on MTurk and Prolific. Of which 584 Mturk responses
were analyzed based on their completed responses. These included 210 participants who identified
as parents, 160 as educators, and 214 as other caregivers. Similarly, 396 responses from our survey
posted on Prolific were analyzed, of which 183 identified as parents, 122 identified as educators,
and 91 identified as other caregivers. This left us with a final dataset comprising 393 parents, 282
educators, and 305 other caregivers.
Of the 980 records analyzed, 56.42% of our participants were aged between 25 and 40 years old.
Two participants who identified as educators and one other caregiver were over 71 years old. In
addition, over 56% of our participants reported identifying as male, 40.71% percent identified as
female, six participants identified as non-binary, and one participant identified as transgender.
Finally, most participants (80%) reported at least some college education, with educators having
the highest percentage (84.75%). Table 1 provides the overview of the participants’ demographics
of the study.
4.2
Parents’ Perspective
Here we report on our participants who identified as parents. Online education has created several
issues for parents, which may or may not be related to technology. 393 of our participants identified
as parents; these participants answered our survey for a total of 614 school-aged children.
4.2.1 Importance of Cybersecurity. Parents were asked questions to gauge the perceived importance
of cybersecurity for their children. Our results show that most participants who identified as a
parent from both crowdsourcing platforms acknowledge the importance of cybersecurity for their
children; in fact, over 72.31% of the children’s parents believed cybersecurity to be extremely
important or very important. While less than 2.3% of parents thought cybersecurity to be “Not at
all important” to their children who were mostly in K-2 grades, this can be examined further in
Figure 1.
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Table 1. Demographics of the Participants, including age, gender and education level
Educators
Parents
Other caregivers
42
85
84
46
14
10
2
14
94
155
91
26
13
0
44
77
112
46
15
10
1
109
150
2
0
21
166
221
1
0
5
124
180
1
0
0
0
3
150
87
17
3
9
1
1
1
52
192
91
4
18
9
19
3
1
25
158
87
3
7
7
14
3
Age
18 − 24 years
25 − 30 years
31 − 40 years
41 − 50 years
51 − 60 years
61 − 70 years
Over 71 years
Gender
Female
Male
Non Binary
Transgender
Did not specify
Education Level
Less than high school
High school graduate
Bachelors degree program
Masters degree program
Doctorate
Diploma
Professional degree
Vocational training
Other
K-2 grade 7
9
3-5 grade 0 5
16
6-8 grade 1 4
14
9-12 grade 4 4
55
60
74
64
46
21
College 12 12
Graduate 1012 3
28
20
18
10
58
39
Not at all important
Slightly important
Moderately important
Very important
Extremely important
Fig. 1. Parents Perceived Cybersecurity importance for students
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4.2.2 Cybersecurity Incidents Involving Children. Parents were asked if their children were part
of a cybersecurity incident. Parents of 140 children confirmed they were indeed involved in a
cybersecurity incident. However, some parents chose not to answer this question. Only 10 of which
explicitly selected the option “chose not to answer” , while 2 participants chose to ignore the
question altogether. More details are shown through the bar graphs in Figure 2.
25
K-2 grade
126
3-5 grade
40
6-8 grade
40
9-12 grade
College
3
116
4
79
17
4
71
12
31
1
0
Yes
No
Did Not Answer
Graduate 6 10
Fig. 2. Frequency of cyber incidents that involved students as reported by the parents
4.2.3 Time spent using ICTs. Parents of 24 children purport that the amount these children spend
online has decreased since they started online education. Only 5 of whom affirm that it has
drastically reduced. Parents of 15.15% of these children estimate that there was no change in the
amount of time spent on ICTs during remote education.
48
K-2 grade
59
3-5 grade
43
37
9-12 grade
19
Graduate 4 130
29
17
27
77
54
6-8 grade
College
71
5 20
18
62
20
21
40
41
32
Greatly increased
Somewhat increased
No change
Somewhat decreased
Greatly decreased
Fig. 3. Perceptions of parents on the students’ time spent on ICTs during remote learning
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4.2.4 Cybersecurity Communication. Parents were asked how frequently they communicate with
their children about cybersecurity. This will allow us to understand if the perceived importance
and the frequency of cybersecurity communications correlate. Parents were also asked about the
prevalence of cybersecurity communication they received from their children’s schools. For over
39.57% of the children, parents affirmed that they rarely or never receive communication about
cybersecurity from their children’s schools. Additionally, for over 44.46% of the children, parents
confirmed that they discuss cybersecurity of safety with their children weekly or even daily.
4.3
Educators’ Perspective
In this section, we will detail the results pertaining to our participants who identified as educators.
282 participants identified as educators, and they answered questions for 391 different classes. This
analysis was critical as the shift to online education has impacted educators globally.
4.3.1 Importance of Cybersecurity. Most educators who took the survey deemed cybersecurity,
cyber safety, and privacy critical (66.75%) for their students, while 21.74% of our participants believe
cybersecurity is “Moderately Important”. Only 11 participants identified as educators proclaimed
that cybersecurity is not essential to their students, most of whom teach college-level classes.
4.3.2 Cybersecurity Incidents Involving Students. Educators were asked whether their students
were involved in any cybersecurity incidents. This question is crucial because it allows us to
understand how educators are engaged in the cybersecurity of their students in general. By asking
this question, we were primarily interested in comparing the number of incidents reported by the
different categories. This can confirm the importance of committing to cybersecurity communication
with students. 23.53% (92) of educators confirmed that their students were a part of a cyber incident;
only 26 participants refused to answer this question or skipped it altogether, while the rest did not
report any incidents.
4.3.3 Time spent using ICTs. The time spent using ICTs during online education has increased,
according to most of our participants. Over 45.78% of our participants who identified as educators
affirmed that their students’ time spent on ICTs has dramatically increased, and 40.15% said that
it somewhat increased. Only four participants mentioned that their students’ time spent on ICTs
decreased, while the rest estimated no change.
4.3.4 Organizational Cybersecurity Communication. Our participants were asked multiple questions about their communication about cybersecurity from different standpoints. These questions
sought to examine the frequency at which the cybersecurity of the students is conferred, not
only from the perspective of the students but also from the perspectives of their caretakers and
parents, as well as school administrations. Over 58.31% of participants who identified as educators
affirmed that students’ parents and caretakers never or rarely reached out to communicate with
them about cybersecurity and privacy, and 12.27% of our participants who identified as educators
have affirmed that a caretaker has reached out to them daily about the cybersecurity or privacy
of the students. This is compared to only 42.2% educators who declare that they never or rarely
reach out to the parents and caregivers of their students about their cybersecurity, cyber safety, and
privacy. Similarly, 37.6% of educators proclaim that school administration rarely or never reaches
out to them about cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy.
4.4
Other Caregivers’ Perspective
This section will detail the results of our participants who identified as other caregivers. Although
a total of 324 caregivers were considered for this analysis, these specific participants answered
questions for 517 different children. Including caregivers other than parents and educators in this
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study is critical since this category offers necessary support, help, and guidance in raising future
generations. In addition, it can include kinship caregivers such as siblings and grandparents, or
babysitters, guardians, and social workers.
4.4.1 Importance of Cybersecurity. Other caregivers were asked questions to assess their perceived
cybersecurity importance. More than 83.95% of our participants in this category deemed cybersecurity critical or extremely important; in fact, only one participant said that cybersecurity is not
essential to the child they cared for; more details can be viewed in Figure 4.
K-2 grade 03 11
3-5 grade 03
59
55
26
6-8 grade 13
93
19
9-12 grade 02 8
College 012 7 7
Graduate 0 13 3
67
31
53
48
14
Not at all important
Slightly important
Moderately important
Very important
Extremely important
Fig. 4. Other caregivers perceived cybersecurity importance for students
4.4.2 Cybersecurity Incidents Involving Children. Caregivers reported the highest number of incidents among the children they cared for, with 44.59% of these children being involved in a
cybersecurity incident. Furthermore, 19 caregivers refused to answer the question about cybersecurity incidents by explicitly choosing the “Prefer not to answer” option, while ten other caregivers
just skipped this question. More details on the distribution of incidents by grade level are provided
in Figure 5.
4.4.3 Time spent using ICTs. According to caregivers, 85% children under their care have been
spending more time using ICTs. However, also according to caregivers, about 11.01% of the children
did not change their use of ICTs. As for the rest of the children(19), their caregivers claim that their
time spent on ICTs has decreased. Figure 6 provides an insight into the distribution of students’
time spent using ICTs by educational grade level.
4.4.4 Cybersecurity Communication. For 67.16% of the children, caregivers affirmed that they
discuss cybersecurity weekly or daily. However, only 15 of these children have yet to receive any
cybersecurity communications from their caregivers. Similar results extended to the communication
initiated by the children’s schools and targeting their caregivers, where 58.77% of the children’s
schools initiate these conversations weekly or daily. In contrast, only 6.34% of these schools never
do so.
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Faiza Tazi, Sunny Shrestha, and Sanchari Das
59
K-2 grade
67
86
3-5 grade
85
57
6-8 grade
9-12 grade
4
19
70
35
7
12
1
College 5 8 4
Graduate
Yes
No
Did Not Answer
13 30
Fig. 5. Number of cyber incidents that involved students according to other caregivers
41
K-2 grade
58
3-5 grade
19
9 51
97
42
6-8 grade
9-12 grade
72
69
30
17
25
30
21
5 10
College 6 4 3 22
Graduate 3 11 020
Greatly increased
Somewhat increased
No change
Somewhat decreased
Greatly decreased
Fig. 6. Perceptions of other caregivers on the students’ time spent on ICTs during remote learning
4.5
Cross-category and Cross-platform Comparisons
To understand further the similarities and differences in the perceptions of parents, educators, and
other caregivers, we conducted additional statistical analysis to gauge the differences between
groups. Since our data were not normally distributed, we could not use ANOVA to do this analysis;
we chose the Kruskal-Wallis rank sum test. Table 2 shows the test results for different themes
considered during this analysis, proving a significant difference between the three categories
in all the themes. Consequently, we conducted a pairwise Wilcoxon test to calculate pairwise
comparisons between category levels. Table 3 shows that for all themes except the “Time spent
Using ICTs” and “Computer knowledge scores” parents and other caregivers are significantly
different. In addition, educators and other caregivers are significantly different in all themes except
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one: “Caregiver’s perceived cybersecurity importance for child”. On the other hand, we can see a
significant difference between educators and parents for only three themes, as shown in Table 2.
Table 2. Kruskal-Wallis rank sum test result to compare educator, parents, and other caregivers.
Time spent Using ICTs
School initiated communication about cybersecurity
Caregiver initiated communication about cybersecurity with child
Cybersecurity tools were available in support of student’s online learning
Caregiver’s perceived cybersecurity importance for student
Cybersecurity incidents involving student
Cybersecurity knowledge score
Computer knowledge score
𝜒2
df
25.727 2
53.567 2
87.288 2
57.435 2
22.818 2
46.961 2
141.97 2
7.5495 2
p-Val
< 0.0001
< 0.0001
< 0.0001
< 0.0001
< 0.0001
< 0.0001
< 0.0001
0.02
Table 3. Pairwise Wilcox p-value to compare educator, parents, and other caregivers. (Ed: Educator, P: Parent,
OCG: Other CareGiver)
Time spent Using ICTs
School initiated communication about cybersecurity
Caregiver initiated communication about cybersecurity with child
Cybersecurity tools available in support of student online learning
Caregiver’s perceived cybersecurity importance for student
Cybersecurity incidents involving student
Cybersecurity knowledge score
Computer knowledge score
Ed vs P
0.00036
0.3
< 0.0001
0.65
< 0.0001
0.63
0.078
0.257
Ed vs OCG
< 0.0001
< 0.0001
< 0.0001
< 0.0001
0.66
<0.0001
0.0001
0.03
P vs OCG
0.12844
< 0.0001
< 0.0001
< 0.0001
< 0.0001
< 0.0001
< 0.0001
0.082
To explore the differences between platforms, we used the Kruskal-Wallis rank sum test on each
question, organizing the answers by platform. For the question of the perceptions of cybersecurity,
cyber safety, and privacy importance, there was no significance between platforms for participants
who identified as parents (𝑝 = 0.09) as for educators and other caregivers; there was a statistically
significant difference between platforms with a p-value of 1.733𝑒 − 09 and 0.004 respectively.
Furthermore, there was no statistically significant difference between platforms on time spent on
ICTs during remote learning for all categories (𝑝 > 0.32). Moreover, the results for communication
all show statistically significant differences between platforms with a p-value equal to or less than
0.0005, except for communication initiated by caregivers towards students with a p-value of 0.32.
4.6
Open-Ended Question Evaluation
Our questionnaire included several open-ended questions to give our participants more opportunities to convey opinions, thoughts, and insights on the relevance of cybersecurity to the students.
In the educator segment of the survey, participants were asked ten open-ended questions, while
the parents and other caregivers segments included 6 open-ended questions each. Participants
were not required to answer questions, so naturally, they only sometimes answered the text entry
questions or provided sparse or unusable replies. However, more detailed responses show our
participants’ concerns and speculations regarding the students’ cybersecurity. Consequently, we
conducted a thematic analysis of the open-ended responses and inferred some essential themes
that we will present in the following subsections. Some answers provide a glimpse of crucial pieces
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Faiza Tazi, Sunny Shrestha, and Sanchari Das
regarding cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy communication, as well as the challenges of
online education. A constant pattern that keeps appearing limits the amount of time the children
are allowed to spend on the internet to keep them safe.
4.6.1 Importance of Cybersecurity. The student support system was asked about their perspective
on the importance of cybersecurity to students. The consensus was that cybersecurity is a priority
but only sometimes a top priority among all participants. An open-ended question was then asked
to reveal the participants’ mindset. The responses to these questions were then classified into
themes: privacy, online predators, malware and phishing, inappropriate content, not concerned,
improper interaction, and vulnerable population.
29
10
16
96
27
39
34
47
21
15
19
19
9
9
10
18
32
8
Ma
l
Ph ware
ish
&
ing
Co Not
nce
rn e
d
pp
Co ropri
nte ate
nt
Ina
Vu
Po lnera
pu
lat ble
ion
y
vac
Pri
G
Im ener
po
rta ic
nce
Theme
P
E
OCG
Pre
dat
ors
Table 4. Distribution of the themes generated from thematic analysis of the question: “Why do you think
cybersecurity is important/not important to your child/students ”.E: Educator, P: Parent and OCG: Other
CareGiver
5
9
4
“Online Predators” was a recurring theme within multiple questions. The student support system
believes that students need protection from strangers and, in the case of cyberbullying, from each
other. One prolific caregiver declared that:
“I want to prevent the child from accessing non-age appropriate sites and communicating with adult strangers, both of which are essential for their safety and psychological
well-being.” (OCG-P-57) 9
Cyberbullying was rarely mentioned in the initial open-ended answers; very few participants said
cyberbullying was part of the subjects they communicated with the students about. However, when
asked about their perspective on the importance of cybersecurity, many participants conveyed
their worry about students being cyberbullied or even bullying each other, as they mentioned:
“Because it helps to prevent the child from being bullied and possible abuse.” (OCG- P
-94)
Similarly, our participants conveyed their worry about identity theft and privacy loss. Participants
worry not only about the outside attack but also about the type of data the students are sharing
online and with whom they are sharing that information. a participant stated that
“There is so much at stake for my child’s identity. Cybersecurity is an ever-increasing
matter that we need to deal with... ” (P-P-49)
Another participant conveyed that:
“The digital footprint and implications of those footprints for young people may not
be apparent until later in life, and it is imperative that ample steps are taken to convey
that” (OCG-P-61)
9 The
first part of the code refers to the category the participant identifies as, E: Educator, P: Parent and OCG: Other
CareGiver. The second part of the code stands for the platform, MTK: Mturk, P: Prolific
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An equally important theme that emerged during this discussion is the vulnerability of children.
Children are the most vulnerable to cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy issues due to their age,
lack of experience, and tendency to trust others. The consequences for children can be devastating.
The student support system also mentions how these students might need more maturity and
perception to protect themselves online. One such parent notes that:
“I wonder if my first child understands the importance of cybersecurity and/or how it
can be used by less-desirable individuals.” (P-MTK-33)
Another caregiver states:
“...because they are children, they are vulnerable to hackers, so security and safety are
vital.” (E-MTK-58)
Finally, some participants stated they were not concerned about cybersecurity, cyber safety, and
privacy of the students. Some of these participants claimed that it is because the students have
limited access to their ICTs that they are not concerned about cybersecurity, cyber safety, and
privacy
“If my child had unlimited access to the internet, then I believe I would be much more
interested in cybersecurity.”(P-P-21)
“They don’t do anything besides play games” (OCG-P-113)
Multiple participants also claimed that the students are old enough to understand the repercussions and care for themselves online.
“Old enough to look out for himself.” (OCG-P-54)
4.6.2 Communication Between Students and Student Support Structure. Several open-ended questions directly explored how students’ support structure communicates with the student(s) about
cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy, a topic identified as one of our survey themes. For example,
one prompt asked participants to describe an experience communicating these ideas with a student.
Multiple themes emerged from the answers, including online predators, privacy, password safety,
malware and phishing, safe browsing, age-appropriate social media, no discussions, and general
discussions. However, some answers needed to be clearer to be classified within a theme and were
not used. In the following paragraphs, we will discuss the most prevalent themes.
44
10
26
40
8
24
34
31
18
24
11
16
6
12
8
2
6
1
1
0
5
dia
Me
So c
ial
Ap Age
pro
pri
ate
Ma
l
Ph ware
ish
&
ing
dis
cus
sio
n
9
16
3
No
s
sw
ord
Pas
row
s
eb
Saf
G
Dis ener
cus al
sio
n
dat
o
Pre
Theme
P
E
OCG
Pri
vac
y
rs
ing
Table 5. Distribution of the themes generated from thematic analysis of the question: “Please give an example
or describe your experience discussing cybersecurity or cyber safety or privacy with your child/students”
3
0
1
Many participants shared that their main concern is for privacy, making sure to let the children
know that they should not share passwords, pictures, locations, or personal information online;
one such participant mentioned that they communicate with their children and quote that:
“Keep your personal information private; avoid sharing your name, address, telephone
number, birthday, passwords, and the name of your school when using the Internet.
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Faiza Tazi, Sunny Shrestha, and Sanchari Das
Think twice before you post or say anything online; once in cyberspace, it is out there
forever.” (MTK-P-117)
Many of our participants also try to warn their kids about online predators, asking them not
to communicate with strangers and warning them to be wary of people they meet online. One
participant who identified as a caregiver noted that,
“<the child> knows to never give out information to people she does not know on
the internet, even when they may have been added to the same chat on Instagram,
because she does not know who is behind the screen and what their intentions might
be.” (OCG-P-74)
A parent also mentioned that:
“I constantly remind them that they do not know who is really on the other side of
the internet and you do not know if they have good intentions, so don’t tell people
anything” (P-P-38)
A few participants also disclosed their worry about zoom bombing:
“After an incident in a nearby district regarding cybersecurity, -an educator- discussed
what to do if something inappropriate occurs over Zoom. This included how to leave
the meeting and instructions to inform an adult.” (E-MTK-125)
10
26
16
Co
m
wi mun
th
stu icatio
den n
ts
35
29
30
N
to othin
im
pro g
ve
on
B
mm etter
un
ica
ti
31
32
30
Co
Sp
mm ecifi
un c
ica
tio
n
12
64
14
Co
Theme
P
E
OCG
C
Tra lass/
ini
ng
Table 6. Distribution of the themes generated from thematic analysis of the question: “How can your child’s
school improve its communication about cybersecurity and privacy ”
13
2
4
4.6.3 Improving Cybersecurity Communication. Parents, teachers, and other caregivers, often do
not understand the risks associated with cybersecurity. As such, schools need to be able to provide
adequate communication regarding cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy. When asked how
schools can improve this communication, our participants had many ideas. We organized these
answers into themes, including offering classes or training, communicating about cybersecurity
with the students directly, communicating more frequently about it, or having specific ideas on the
type and content of the communication. Some participants did not have anything to improve; more
information on these themes can be found in Table 6. Participants who were not very tech-savvy
asked for more information delivered in a user-friendly manner. One participant asked for the
following:
“More information for parents who do not understand IT.” (P-P-15)
A frequent theme within this question is better communication with parents. This includes enhancing the quality of the communication:
“I think they could communicate with parents better. I find a great deal of the fine
details have been entrusted to children initially, leaving my wife and I to have to pursue
more information - through school and on our own.”(P-P-39)
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(P-P-32) Responses were also classified within this theme if they discuss the consistency of the
communication, promptness, or ask for more frequent communication. Multiple participants asked
for information to be sent more frequently and more consistently to them.
“I think they should release more messaging on the subject. Cybersecurity does not
seem to be as significant a focus as I think it should be.” (P-P-44)
Similarly, a prevalent theme in our analysis “Specific communication”encompasses participants
asking for notifications of security issues:
“Send us reports of any reported cybersecurity incidents that have happened.” (OCGP-82)
Or participants asking for a specific means of communication such as email, text messages, or
phone calls, or participants asking for communication to include recommendations on tools.
An important theme, especially among participants who identified as educators, is “ class/training”where
participants asked to be provided with classes, workshops, or training to help them learn more
about cybersecurity and cyber safety:
“The range of tech competence among faculty members is so varied that it is impossible
to design a one size fits all cybersecurity and privacy training that’s both relevant
and accessible to the majority of the staff. I think the only effective way to improve
cybersecurity would involve an initial assessment of each faculty member’s knowledge
and sorting them into one of two or three training based on how much detail and
beginner knowledge they need.”(E-P-64)
On the other hand, some participants mentioned that they were not concerned about this type
of communication and that they required less communication. As one participant requested:
“Don’t send more information to the parent. It’s just confusing.” (P-P-98)
31
22
9
ing
28
17
28
Me
He ntal
alt
h
lly
bu
Cy
ber
9
27
18
pp
Co ropri
nte ate
nt
Ma
Ph lwar
ish e
ing
26
2
11
Pri
Theme
P
E
OCG
Ina
O
Pre nline
dat
ors
29
33
17
y
vac
Table 7. Distribution of the themes generated from thematic analysis of the question: “Can you elaborate on
the form of cyber threats you are most concerned about for your child ”
17
0
0
4.6.4 Student Support Structure Cyber Threat Concerns. An essential section of our survey asked
about the cyber threats the student support structure is concerned about regarding the students.
An open-ended question delved more into this subject to discern their apprehensions and worries.
The themes from these answers comprised mental health, online predators, financial repercussions,
privacy, inappropriate content, malware, and age-appropriate communication.
An critical theme that emerged from this analysis is mental health. Participants were worried
about the repercussions of online safety on the student’s mental health, citing that cyberbullying
and inappropriate content can hurt children’s mental health. One of the parents mentions that:
“inappropriate content is too easy to access and easy to view without any effort by
the child. This is probably by far the most adverse effect on a child’s mentality and
long-term experiences” (P-P-48)
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Faiza Tazi, Sunny Shrestha, and Sanchari Das
An equally important theme that emerged from the open-ended answers is age-appropriate communication, as some participants noted that they avoid some topics since they feel that their children
are not concerned about them at their age, as one participant mentions:
“Consider your child’s maturity level. Before making any decisions about screen time,
consider your child’s maturity level. Ideally, as your child ages, they should be able to
handle more responsibility and make rational decisions. However, this is only sometimes
the case. If your child is irresponsible, immature, and has an attitude, think of all of the
negative ways that technology can amplify this. Make sure that your child can handle
all of the responsibility that comes along with technology.”(OCG-MTK-72)
Similarly, a different parent noted:
“...I can block sites according to what I think is the appropriate level for the child.” (PMTK-56)
4.7
Research Questions
RQ1: How do educators, parents, and other caregivers perceive cybersecurity, cyber safety,
and privacy threats concerning their children and students with online education?
Through our analysis, we determine that the majority of the students’ support structure believe
that cyber security and privacy is essential to students, 66.75% of participants who identified as
educators deemed cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy extremely important or very important,
over 72.31% of the children’s parents shared the same position, similarly, 83.95% of our participants
who identified as other caregiver regarded cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy as critical.
Moreover, these results are further corroborated by the qualitative analysis of the open-ended
questions, where themes regarding the perceived importance of cyber security included: “Generic
Importance”, “Online Predators”, “Privacy”, “Vulnerable Population”, “Malware & Phishing”and
“Not Concerned”. This last theme includes participants who were not concerned about cyber security
and safety because they were not the child’s primary caretaker and did not manage device usage,
educators with older students, and parents who only allowed their children online for a specific
time or usage. The rest of the themes were all pertinent to perceived reasons why cyber security
and safety are vital to students.
Most of the students’ support structures believe cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy are
important for students for numerous reasons. The motive behind this perception includes worry
about online predators and inappropriate content and the apprehension about the mental repercussion this could have on these vulnerable children. Participants also had concerns about attacks
on the devices used by the students. However, through the analysis of the open-ended questions,
we also noticed that the participants who indicated they were not concerned about cybersecurity
and cyber safety defended their attitudes, albeit with reasons that can sometimes be misguided.
Some of the more frequent arguments include: Students are knowledgeable about cyber security
and safety, or they have been trained to stay safe online; some of the reasons also include the fact
that children are only allowed online for a limited amount of time or they are only allowed online
to do school work.
RQ2: To what extent is the communication between the parties accountable for students’
cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy reliable and efficient?
Parents and caregivers were asked how frequently they communicated about cyber security and
safety with the students. Results were different between the two groups, where almost 45% of
the parents proclaimed that they discussed cybersecurity with their children regularly, whereas
67.16% of the caregivers made the same claim. On the other hand, educators were asked about
Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact., Vol. 7, No. CSCW2, Article 264. Publication date: October 2023.
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organizational cybersecurity communication. Results show that over half of the educators (58.31%)
never received cybersecurity communication from the student’s parents, and caretakers. In contrast,
over 42% of educators declare that they rarely reach out to parents about cybersecurity and cyber
safety. Similarly, about a third of educators proclaimed that school administration rarely reaches
out to them about cybersecurity and cyber safety.
In addition to the quantitative analysis, we have also conducted qualitative analysis on some
open-ended questions to understand better the type of communication between students and
their support structure and the importance of enhancing cybersecurity communication with our
participants. From our analysis of the responses we got through asking the following question:
“Please give an example or describe your experience discussing cyber security or safety with
your child/students” we notice that parents mainly discussed privacy and identity theft, online
predators, safe browsing and secure passwords. Very few participants mentioned social media in
their discussions, and many offered a generic answer that mentioned the frequency at which they
discuss cybersecurity with the students without being specific about the topics they discuss. A few
participants also mentioned that they should have discussed cybersecurity and cyber safety with
the students, but many participants offered senseless answers or no answers.
We compare these results to the reported cyber incidents: 140 parents reported that their children
were involved in a cyber security incident. In addition, about 23.53% of the educators also confirmed
that their students were part of a cyber incident, and over 44.59% of caregivers reported the same.
These high numbers show that the cybersecurity, cyber safety and privacy education students
receive is inadequate, inefficient and fails to keep them safe online regardless of the frequency or
the type of communication they receive.
RQ3: What are the individual factors that contribute to the attitudes of parents, educators,
and other caregivers towards cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy of children in the
online education context?
To glean the factors responsible for the perceptions of our participants, we conducted a linear
regression analysis on the three categories of participants. For each category, we first checked
for Pearson correlation between variables. Then we generated multiple linear regression models
with the independent variables that did not present a mild or strong correlation. We then used the
likelihood-ratio test and the r ANOVA () function to compare models. Table 8 presents the results
of the best models we generated for each category.
The results of this analysis were different for each category, as shown in Table 8. Through this
analysis, we conclude that for participants who identified as educators, the individual factors that
contribute to their attitude towards the importance of cyber security and safety are the students’
time spent using ICTs, the frequency of the cyber security and safety communication initiated by
the parents, the perceptions of the tools available to support the security and safety of the students
and to some extent the computer knowledge of the educators. On the other hand, these results
were somewhat different for participants who identified as other caregivers, where their attitudes
were affected mainly by the students’ time spent using ICTs, the frequency of the communication
they received from the school administration as well as the communication they have with the
students themselves, the caregiver’s security knowledge and to some extent whether the students
they care for have been a victim of a cyber security incident or not. Finally, parents’ attitudes were
only influenced by their security knowledge and the frequency by which they communicated with
their children about cyber security and safety.
5
IMPLICATION
Our study provided critical insights into the issues students’ support structures face in everyday
education, which hinders them from supporting children to facilitate their online education in a
Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact., Vol. 7, No. CSCW2, Article 264. Publication date: October 2023.
264:22
Faiza Tazi, Sunny Shrestha, and Sanchari Das
Table 8. Estimated regression 𝛽 coefficients, standard error values and t-test p-values from linear regression
Coefficient
Estimate
Educators
Intercept
1.80688
Student time on ICT
0.18366
Frequency of cyber security or safety communication initiated
0.2039
by a parent or caregiver
Perceptions of tools available to support the cyber security and 0.17875
safety of students
Computer Knowledge
0.1508
Parents
Intercept
3.0084
Frequency of cyber security or safety communication with stu- 0.3802
dents
−0.1915
Security Knowledge
Other caregiver
Intercept
3.880
Student time on ICT
0.26
Frequency of cyber security or safety school administration
0.102
communications
Frequency of cyber security or safety communication with stu0.123
dents
Cyber incidents involving students
−0.108
Security Knowledge
−0.312
std. Error
p-value
0.3295
0.06745
0.04092
< 0.00001***
0.0068**
< 0.00001***
0.05794
0.0022**
0.08528
0.0779.
0.102
0.0348
< 0.00001***
< 0.00001***
0.05816
0.00104**
0.131
0.040
0.0378
< 0.00001***
< 0.00001***
0.0073**
0.042
0.0037**
0.065
0.059
0.0999.
< 0.0073**
secure and privacy-preserving manner. In this study, given the time of data collection, we were
able to obtain extensive insight into how people have navigated the emergent shift to online
education due to COVID-19. However, irrespective of the daily use of digital technology, including
for education at different levels, people’s awareness of cybersecurity and privacy is concerning
though their intention to keep the student and children’s data safe and secure is to be acknowledged.
Given our analysis, we have provided some recommendations for the topic.
5.1
Cybersecurity Awareness and Education
As of April 2022, over 63% of the world population are ICT users 10 ; therefore, it is essential
to understand the basics of cyber threats, regardless of age or browsing habits [39]. Similarly,
cybersecurity in education is vital for multiple reasons, the most critical of which is to ensure
cybersecurity, cyber safety and privacy of the students [43]. To do so, the students’ support structure
must first be educated on this topic. Furthermore, as noted in the results, security knowledge is an
essential factor in the perceptions of both parents and other caregivers, as such a formal security
awareness will help these caregivers support their children and teach them to recognize cyber
risks such as cyberbullying, protection of data privacy or phishing. Likewise, educators and school
administrations need to be proactive in the cybersecurity education of caregivers and students [17].
Thus, we propose regular technological support and digital literacy to students and their parents,
educators, and caregivers. Additionally, educational institutions should establish or improve the
communication channel between academic institutions and caregivers to improve the cybersecurity
10 https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/
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Cybersecurity, Safety, & Privacy Concerns of Online Education
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awareness of the students’ support structures [37]. Providing adequate and targeted cybersecurity
resources would help these caregivers understand the risks and mitigate the threats.
5.2
Tools and Tips
Children face many risks while interacting online, including inappropriate content, zoom bombing,
commercial spam, cyberbullying, privacy loss, and internet addiction [36]. Unfortunately, the
students’ support structure in and out of school needs to be aware of these threats to provide
adequate support. When asked about the tools used to protect the children, most participants in
our study who provided an answer to this open-ended question mentioned antivirus software
or firewalls as the tools they used. This shows that these caregivers are unaware of the threats
the children run online. Additionally, some participants who identified as parents or caregivers
mentioned parental control software as the primary tool used to keep the children safe online,
which can lead to privacy concerns, especially for teenagers [36, 57]. Consequently, better tools
must be developed to help students support structure to ensure children’s online security, safety,
and privacy. These tools need to consider all the threats children face and ensure ease of usability
for the parents, educators, and caregivers who may or may not have the technical knowledge [23].
5.3
FERPA in Light of Online Education
The Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protects personally identifiable information
(PII) enclosed in student education records; these PII protected under FERPA do not include “directory” information such as a “student’s name, address, telephone number, date and place of birth,
honors and awards, and dates of attendance” 11 . Furthermore, FERPA does not consider online
education in any form [49]. This oversight from the legislative viewpoint can have serious privacy
repercussions on the students, especially when the students’ support structure is unaware of all
the risks and threats students face in the online education format. However, regardless of the
shortcomings of FERPA, educational institutions, as well as educators, need to be trained on FERPA
to be able to protect the students. Furthermore, the students’ support structure needs to be aware
of the student’s rights under FERPA to help safeguard their privacy. This is an interesting problem, especially in the learning disability community [50], as many students reveal their personal
information on these platforms.
5.4
Institutional Support
The swift move to online education put some of the students’ support structure in a precarious
situation in more hardships. These people not only had to deal with the pandemic, the socioeconomic
difficulties, and the lack of support from government entities, but they were also at a crunch to
provide adequate infrastructure to support the student’s online education. As a result, some of these
parents had to revert to device sharing among multiple users [38]. This has the potential to cause
a loss of privacy among these students and presents multiple cybersecurity concerns, especially
when using one account for all students [27]. Furthermore, the absence of universal access to
infrastructure has caused a more immense socioeconomic and educational chasm between the
students. Although a health emergency has caused this move to online education, governments and
educational institutions need to come together to provide adequate support infrastructures such
as internet access and devices to the students before making such a move [37]. Additionally, risk
communication is a helpful tool in cybersecurity and can be immensely helpful if the institutions
can conduct workshops to make users understand the security concerns of shared devices.
11 https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html
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6
Faiza Tazi, Sunny Shrestha, and Sanchari Das
LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE WORK
Online education has been an active research topic for a while, which witnessed an escalation of
interest due to the pandemic. In this paper, we expand on this topic by studying parents, educators,
and other caregivers’ perceptions on cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy of the students. Though
the survey design provided critical insights into this field of research, it leaves out the user base of
the students. We plan to investigate the students’ perspective of cybersecurity, cyber safety, and
privacy in online education in a future extension of this work. Thus, we are already collaborating
with different educational institutions to obtain student data to overcome the limitation of obtaining
an institutional-focused perspective. Privacy and cybersecurity are not the foremost concerns for
parents, educators, and caregivers when it comes to their children’s or student’s online education,
and it is imperative to note that there is a lack of tools to address cybersecurity and privacy concerns
even if they wanted to. Thus, we also plan to research tools and methods that helps bridge that
literacy gap for online education users and enables parents, educators, and caregivers to prevent
and mitigate cybersecurity risks faced by students.
7
CONCLUSION
COVID-19 has provoked widespread uncertainty that extended to the education sector. Schools and
universities have had to make last-minute changes and react promptly to the new restrictions they
were facing, which led to a sudden shift from in-person education modules to online education,
which created the attack vector of digital interaction in the education domain. Accordingly, we
set out to understand the cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy perceptions of the student
support structure, including parents, educators, and other caregivers. To this end, we conducted a
survey-based study deployed over crowdsourcing platforms, including MTurk and Prolific. The
study analyzed data collected from 1036 participants, which provided critical insights into the
issues the students’ support system face in everyday education for their children and students.
Our study provides a detailed analysis of online education’s privacy and security concerns by
parents’ educators, and caregivers. It emphasizes the needs and requirements of adequate tools and
legislation to aid secure and privacy-preserving online education. Additionally, our results show
that over 85% of the student support structure involving parents, educators, and other caregivers
find that students have been spending more time online as a direct result of online education.
Consequently, they have been more concerned about cybersecurity, cyber safety, and privacy of
the students with little to no technical support from the educational institutions. We conclude by
providing recommendations to address these concerns, which can enable building digitally secure
tools to facilitate an engaged yet secure online education.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We extend our sincere gratitude to the participants for their time, and the anonymous reviewers for
their feedback that enriched our paper. We would also like to thank the invaluable contributions
of the MTurk and Prolific agents who assisted in modifying the advertisement to reach potential
participants. Furthermore, we are grateful to Dan Norton and Kathryn Walsh for their expert
creation and preparation of the survey. We would also like to acknowledge the Inclusive Security and
Privacy-focused Innovative Research in Information Technology (InSpirit) Lab and the University
of Denver’s Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science for their steadfast support. The
opinions, findings, conclusions and recommendations expressed in this document are those of the
authors and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoints of any associated institutions.
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Cybersecurity, Safety, & Privacy Concerns of Online Education
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A
Faiza Tazi, Sunny Shrestha, and Sanchari Das
STUDY QUESTIONNAIRE
The following questionnaire was used for our study. For the Prolific deployed survey, the questionnaire for each category was deployed separately with all the independent parts of the survey.
A.1
Commitment
We care about the quality of our data. In order to get the most accurate measures of your knowledge
and opinions, it is important that you thoughtfully provide your best answers. Do you commit to
thoughtfully providing your best answers to each question?
• Yes; I will provide my best answers.
• No; I will not provide my best answers.
• Unsure; I cannot promise either way
A.2
Screening
(1) What is your age?
• Less than 18 years
• 18-24 years
• 25-30 years
• 31-40 years
• 41-50 years
• 51-60 years
• 61-70 years
• More than 70 years
(2) Which of the following best describes your role in remote learning (Select All that Apply)
• Parent
• Educator (ex. Professor, Teaching Assistant)
• Other Caregiver
• None of the Above
For MTurk, participants who met the screening criteria were randomly assigned one of the
question blocks corresponding to the category they identified as. As for Prolific, we were not able
to do in survey screening, as such we had to use filters provided by the platform. Accordingly
we deployed three separate surveys on prolific, one for each category. This also ensured an equal
distribution of our participants’ categories.
A.3
Cyber Background Knowledge
The following questions are about your background in Cybersecurity and Cyber Safety.
During this survey, we define:
• Cybersecurity as the protection of data, information, and privacy.
• Cyber Safety as protecting users from harmful online content.
(1) Please estimate how many hours you spend on the internet per week.<DROP DOWN>
(2) Where do you obtain information about cybersecurity or cyber safety? (Please check all that
apply)
• News
• Friends
• School Administration
• Personal research
• Other (please specify)
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(3) What methods have been used to communicate with you about cybersecurity or cyber safety?
(Please check all that apply)
• Email
• Newsletters
• Training
• Meeting
• Other (please specify)
• No Communication
(4) Please rank the following statement on a scale between Strong Disagree to Strongly Agree: “I
often ask others for help with the computer.”
• Strongly Agree
• Somewhat Agree
• Neither Agree nor Disagree
• Somewhat Disagree
• Strongly Disagree
(5) Please rank the following statement on a scale between Strong Disagree to Strongly Agree:
"Others often ask me for help with the computer."
• Strongly Agree
• Somewhat Agree
• Neither Agree nor Disagree
• Somewhat Disagree
• Strongly Disagree
(6) Which of the following things have you done?
• Designed a website
• Registered a domain name
• Used SSH
• Configured a firewall
• Created a database
• Installed a computer program
• Written a computer program
• None of the above
(7) Have you taken or taught a course on computer security?
• Yes
• No
(8) Do you have a security cognate or do you plan on security being a feature of your job role??
• Yes
• No
A.4
Golden Questions
Attention check questions allowed us to cull out the valid question and remove the invalid responses
from our dataset.
(1) What is 6/3?
• 9
• 2
• 3
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Faiza Tazi, Sunny Shrestha, and Sanchari Das
Educators Questions
The following questions were given to the participants who identified as educators. This includes
teachers, professors, lecturers, TA’s, and tutors. They were then prompted to answer the following
questions in terms of their students and classes.
(1) What grades do you teach? (Please select all that apply)
• K-2 grade
• 3-5 grade
• 6-8 grade
• 9-12 grade
• Undergraduate
• Graduate
• Other (please specify)
(2) How many classes are you teaching?
• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five
• Six or More
(3) What best represents the current form of teaching for your students?
• In Person
• Hybrid (a class that has both in-person and remote learning elements)
• Hyflex (each student can either choose their mode of engagement in the course for the day
or will be assigned a mode of engagement for that day)
• Online (a class designed from the ground up so all students can attend the main class
experience online)
• Other (please specify)
(4) What forms of teaching have you experienced from March 2020 - December 2020. (Please
check all that apply)
• In Person
• Hybrid (a class that has both in-person and remote learning elements)
• Hyflex (each student can either choose their mode of engagement in the course for the day
or will be assigned a mode of engagement for that day)
• Online (a class designed from the ground up so all students can attend the main class
experience online)
• Other (please specify)
(5) Have you faced any challenges while teaching remote learning?
• Yes
• No
• Prefer not to answer
(6) If you are comfortable, please describe the challenges.<Open Ended Question>
(7) Have your students communicated any difficulties to you related to remote learning?
• Yes
• No
• Prefer not to answer
(8) If you are comfortable, please describe any feedback you have gotten from students regarding
remote learning. <Open Ended Question>
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(9) What online tools or platforms do you use for remote education? (Please check all that apply)
• Zoom
• Google
• Canvas
• Moodle
• Other(please Specify)
(10) How would you describe your ability to use these tools for remote learning?
• Extremely competent
• Somewhat competent
• Neither competent nor incompetent
• Somewhat incompetent
• Extremely incompetent
(11) What type of device do your students use for remote learning? (Please check all that apply)
• Personal smartphone
• Personal computer
• Personal tablet
• Shared smartphone
• Shared computer
• Shared tablet
• Other (please specify)
(12) What type of device do you use for remote learning? (Please check all that apply)
• Personal smartphone
• Personal computer
• Personal tablet
• Shared smartphone
• Shared computer
• Shared tablet
• Other (please specify)
(13) During remote learning, has the amount of time your students spend using electronics for
school changed?
• Greatly increased
• Somewhat increased
• No change
• Somewhat decreased
• Greatly decreased
(14) How often has a parent or caregiver of your students communicated with you about cybersecurity or cyber safety?
• Daily basis
• Weekly basis
• Monthly basis
• Rarely
• Never
(15) Please describe you experience communicating about cybersecurity or cyber safety with a
parent or caregiver of your students.<Open Ended Question>
(16) How often has the school administration communicated with you about cybersecurity or
cyber safety?
• Daily basis
• Weekly basis
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• Monthly basis
• Rarely
• Never
How has the school administration communicated with you about cybersecurity or cyber
safety? (Please check all that apply)
• Email
• Newsletters
• Training
• Meeting
• Other (please specify)
• No communication
Please elaborate on othe school administration’s communication on cybersecurity or cyber
safety.<Open Ended Question>
How important do you feel cybersecurity or safety is for your students?
• Extremely important
• Very important
• Moderately important
• Slightly important
• Not at all important
How often do you discuss cybersecurity or safety with your students?
• Daily basis
• Weekly basis
• Monthly basis
• Rarely
• Never
Please give an example or describe your experience discussing cybersecurity or safety with
your students.<Open Ended Question>
How often do you discuss cybersecurity or safety the parents or caregivers of your students?
• Daily basis
• Weekly basis
• Monthly basis
• Rarely
• Never
Please give an example or describe your experience discussing cybersecurity or safety with
parents or caregivers.<Open Ended Question>
How would you describe tools available to support the cybersecurity or safety of your
students?
• More than needed
• Slightly more than needed
• The right amount
• Not enough
• None at all
Please describe any tools used to increase you students’ cybersecurity or safety.<Open Ended
Question>
What form of cyber threats are you most concerned about for your students? (drag each
choice to list in rank order)
• Cyberbullying
• Phishing
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• Malware
• Privacy
• Inappropriate content
• Scams
• Other (Please specify)
(27) Please elaborate on your concerns from the previous question.<Open Ended Question>
(28) Have there been any cyber incidents that involved your students?
• Yes
• No
• Choose not to answer
(29) If you are comfortable, please describe the incident.<Open Ended Question>
A.6
Parents Questions
The following questions were given to the participants who identified as parents. Participant
answering questions in this category were asked how many of their children are enrolled in school.
They were then prompted to answer questions for each child individually who is currently enrolled
in school.
(1) How many of your children are currently enrolled in school? NOTE: If you have more than
three children, please select 3 and answer for the children in the most different age and grade
brackets.
• No of my children are enrolled in school
• 1
• 2
• 3
(2) What grade is your child currently enrolled?
• Child is not enrolled in school
• K-2 grade
• 3-5 grade
• 6-8 grade
• 9-12 grade
• College
• Graduate
(3) What forms of teaching has your child experienced from March 2020 - December 2020. (Please
check all that apply)
• In Person
• Hybrid (a class that has both in-person and remote learning elements)
• Hyflex (each student can either choose their mode of engagement in the course for the day
or will be assigned a mode of engagement for that day)
• Online (a class designed from the ground up so all students can attend the main class
experience online)
• Other (please specify)
(4) What best represents the current form of teaching for your child during the current 2021
semester?
• In Person
• Hybrid (a class that has both in-person and remote learning elements)
• Hyflex (each student can either choose their mode of engagement in the course for the day
or will be assigned a mode of engagement for that day)
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• Online (a class designed from the ground up so all students can attend the main class
experience online)
• Other (please specify)
What type of device does your child use for remote learning? (Please check all that apply)
• Personal smartphone
• Personal computer
• Personal tablet
• Shared smartphone
• Shared computer
• Shared tablet
• Other (please specify)
How do you manage the usage of the devices of your child?<Open Ended Question>
During remote learning, has the amount of time the child under your care spends using
electronics for school changed?
• Greatly increased
• Somewhat increased
• No change
• Somewhat decreased
• Greatly decreased
What online tools or platforms does your child use for remote learning? (Please check all
that apply)
• Zoom
• Google
• Canvas
• Moodle
• Other(please Specify)
How often has someone from your child’s school communicated with you about cybersecurity
or cyber safety?
• Daily basis
• Weekly basis
• Monthly basis
• Rarely
• Never
What methods has your child’s school used to communicate with you about cybersecurity or
cyber safety? (Please check all that apply)
• Email
• Newsletters
• Training
• Meeting
• Other (please specify)
• No communication
How important do you feel cybersecurity or safety is for your child?
• Extremely important
• Very important
• Moderately important
• Slightly important
• Not at all important
How often do you discuss cybersecurity or safety with your child?
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• Daily basis
• Weekly basis
• Monthly basis
• Rarely
• Never
Please give an example or describe your experience discussing cybersecurity or safety with
your child.<Open Ended Question>
How would you describe the cybersecurity or safety tools available in support of your child’s
online learning?
• More than needed
• Slightly more than needed
• The right amount
• Not enough
• None at all
Please describe any tools you have used to increase your child’s cybersecurity or safety.<Open
Ended Question>
What form of cyber threats are you most concerned about for your child? (drag each choice
to list in rank order)
• Cyberbullying
• Phishing
• Malware
• Privacy
• Inappropriate content
• Scams
• Other (Please specify)
Please elaborate on your concerns from the previous question.<Open Ended Question>
Have there been any cyber incidents that involved your child?
• Yes
• No
• Choose not to answer
If you are comfortable, please describe the incident.<Open Ended Question>
A.7 Caregiver Questions
The following questions were given when a participant selected the category of a Caregiver (other
than parents). Participant answering questions in this category were asked how many children
are under their care as a Caregiver. They were then prompted to answer questions for each child
individually who is currently enrolled in school.
(1) Of the children under your care, how many of them are currently enrolled in school? NOTE:
If you have more than three children, please select 3 and answer for the children in the most
different age and grade brackets.
• No children under my care are enrolled in school
• 1
• 2
• 3
(2) What grade is your child currently enrolled?
• Child is not enrolled in school
• K-2 grade
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• 3-5 grade
• 6-8 grade
• 9-12 grade
• College
• Graduate
What forms of teaching has the child under your care experienced from March 2020 - December 2020. (Please check all that apply)
• In Person
• Hybrid (a class that has both in-person and remote learning elements)
• Hyflex (each student can either choose their mode of engagement in the course for the day
or will be assigned a mode of engagement for that day)
• On Line
• Other (please specify)
What best represents the current form of teaching for the child under your care during 2021?
• In Person
• Hybrid (a class that has both in-person and remote learning elements)
• Hyflex (each student can either choose their mode of engagement in the course for the day
or will be assigned a mode of engagement for that day)
• On Line
• Other (please specify)
What type of device(s) does the child under your care use for remote learning? (Please check
all that apply)
• Personal smartphone
• Personal computer
• Personal tablet
• Shared smartphone
• Shared computer
• Shared tablet
• Other (please specify)
How do you manage the usage of the devices of your child? <Open Ended Question>
During remote learning, has the amount of time the child under your care spends using
electronics for school changed?
• Greatly increased
• Somewhat increased
• No change
• Somewhat decreased
• Greatly decreased
What online tools or platforms does the child under your care use for remote learning?
(Please check all that apply)
• Zoom
• Google
• Canvas
• Moodle
• Other(please Specify)
How important do you feel cybersecurity or safety is for the child under your care?
• Extremely important
• Very important
• Moderately important
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• Slightly important
• Not at all important
How often has someone from the child’s school communicated with you about cybersecurity
or cyber safety?
• Daily basis
• Weekly basis
• Monthly basis
• Rarely
• Never
What methods has your child’s school used to communicate with you about cybersecurity or
cyber safety? (Please check all that apply)
• Email
• Newsletters
• Training
• Meeting
• Other (please specify)
• No communication
How often do you discuss cybersecurity or safety with the child under your care?
• Daily basis
• Weekly basis
• Monthly basis
• Rarely
• Never
Please give an example or describe your experience discussing cybersecurity or safety with
the child under your care. <Open Ended Question>
How would you describe the cybersecurity or safety tools available in support of online
learning for the child under your care?
• More than needed
• Slightly more than needed
• The right amount
• Not enough
• None at all
Please describe any tools you have used to increase your child’s cybersecurity or safety.<Open
Ended Question>
What form of cyber threats are you most concerned about for the child under your care?
(drag each choice to list in rank order)
• Cyberbullying
• Phishing
• Malware
• Privacy
• Inappropriate content
• Scams
• Other (Please specify)
Please elaborate on your concerns from the previous question. <Open Ended Question>
Have there been any cyber incidents that involved the child under your care?
• Yes
• No
• Choose not to answer
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(19) If you are comfortable, please describe the incident. <Open Ended Question>
A.8
Final Thoughts Question
The next question is an opportunity for our participants to express their for final thoughts.
(1) Is there anything else you think we should know regarding your experience with remote
learning and/or cybersecurity and cyber safety? <Open Ended Question>
A.9
Demographics Questions
(1) What ethnicity do you identify with? (Please select all that apply)
• American Indian or Native American
• Asian
• Black or African American
• Native Hawaiian or Other Pacifc Islander
• White / Caucasian
• Hispanic
• Other. (Please specify)
• Do not wish to specify
(2) Which Gender do you identify with the most?
• Female
• Male
• Transgender
• Non-binary
• A gender not listed here. (Please specify)
• Do not wish to specify
(3) What is the highest level of education you have completed? (If currently enrolled, highest
degree received.)
• Less than high school
• High school graduate
• Diploma
• Vocational training
• Bachelors degree program
• Masters degree program
• Professional degree
• Doctorate
• Other. Please Specify:
(4) What is your current employment status?
• Employed full time
• Employed part time
• Unemployed looking for work
• Unemployed not looking for work
• Retired
• Homemaker/ Housewife
• Unable to work
• Other. Please specify
• Do not wish to specify
(5) What is your current occupation?<TEXT BOX>
(6) What state do you live in?
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(7) What is four plus two?
• 5
• 6
• 9
(8) What is the current annual household income?
• Less than $10, 000
• $10, 000 to $19, 999
• $20, 000 to $29, 999
• $30, 000 to $39, 999
• $40, 000 to $49, 999
• $50, 000 to $59, 999
• $60, 000 to $69, 999
• $70, 000 to $79, 999
• $80, 000 to $89, 999
• $100, 000 to $149, 999
• $150, 000 or more
(9) What is your current relationship status?
• Single, never married
• Married
• Widowed
• Divorced
• Separated
• Do not wish to specify
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Faiza Tazi, Sunny Shrestha, and Sanchari Das
CODE BOOK
Table 9. A snapshot of the correlated open codes and themes generated for thematic analysis of the analyzed
responses sorted by question
Question
Why do you think
cybersecurity is
important/not
important to your
child/student?
Theme
Predators
Open Code
Bad Strangers, Weird Strangers, Age Impersonators, Bullies
Generic Importance
Privacy
Vulnerable Population
Inappropriate
Content
Not Concerned
Important for Everyone, Safety is Important, Cybersecurity is a must, To
protect from online dangers
Data Loss, Data shared online by Child, Data Theft, Identity Theft
Children are Vulnerable, Children don’t understand, Children are Naive,
Children can’t protect themselves
Not age Appropriate Content, Inappropriate content, See something they
shouldn’t
Child old enough child can protect themselves, Child knows not to, Not
Primary Caretaker, Not concerned, Child not Allowed Online for Long
Time, Child only Allowed Online for School or Gaming.
Malware/Phishing Virus, Malware, Phishing, Clicking on Links, Opening Emails
Please give an
Privacy
Data Loss, Data shared online by Child, Data Theft, Identity Theft
example or describe Predators
Bad Strangers, Weird Strangers, Age Impersonators, Bullies
your experience General Discus- Discuss News, Discuss Frequently,
discussing
sion
cybersecurity or Safe Browsing
Safe Web Browsing, Only Allowed on Specific Websites, Not Allowed to
safety with your
Search on Google
child/students
Passwords
Good Password Practices, Strong Passwords, Password Sharing
No Discussion
Don’t Discuss, Child Knows, Child doesn’t Understand
Malware/Phishing Virus, Malware, Phishing, Clicking on Links, Opening Emails
Age appropriate Child is too young, Age Appropriate Discussion
Social Media
Dangers of Social Media, Posting on Social Media, Owning Accounts On
Social Media
How can your
Class/Training
Workshop, Class, Training, Online classes, Course, Seminar
child’s school
Specific Commu- Email Communication, Phone Class, Communicate about Threats, Commuimprove its
nication
nicate about Scams, Communicate about Tools
communication
Better Communi- Prompt communication, Weekly communication, Monthly communication,
about cybersecuritycation
Fast communication, More Frequent communication, Consistent communiand cyber safety
cation
Nothing to Im- School is doing Good Job, Nothing to Improve
prove
Communication Reach out to Students, Teach Students
with Students
Can you elaborate Privacy
Data Loss, Data shared online by Child, Data Theft, Identity Theft
on the form of
Online Predators Bad Strangers, Weird Strangers, Age Impersonators
cyber threats you Malware/Phishing Virus, Malware, Phishing, Clicking on Links, Opening Emails
Not age Appropriate Content, Inappropriate content, See something they
are most concerned Inappropriate
about for your child Content
shouldn’t
Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying, bullying
Mental Health
Mental Breakdown, Suicide, Bad for Mental Health, Depression
Received July 2022; revised January 2023; accepted March 2023
Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact., Vol. 7, No. CSCW2, Article 264. Publication date: October 2023.