The Cyber Savvy Survey has been developed by the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use to support school districts in providing effective prevention education related to digital safety and civility, implementing effective prevention and intervention initiatives, and facilitating local evaluation. The survey is for students in 7th to 12th grade. The survey asks questions in a variety of areas:
- Basic demographic information, including risk indicators, and perceptions of school climate.
- Social networking and other Internet practices.
- Norms and practices related to responsible or risky use of digital technologies.
- Involvement in digital aggression (cyberbullying) as a target, aggressor, or witness.
- Involvement in digital abuse or exploitation as a target or witness.
The norms and practices data, as well as data on responses in situations of digital aggression, abuse, or exploitation, can be used for instruction and messaging. This instruction will seek to reinforce positive norms, increase effective skills, and engage young people to be helpful allies.
In the sections on digital aggression, abuse, and exploitation, questions are posed in a way that will enable local school officials to gain greater insight into these situations, including the degree of harm, perceived ability to independently respond, who was involved, how many, on- or off-campus, prior relationships, responses (by self or others) and the effectiveness of those responses. It will be possible to easily filter all responses based on individual responses, thus allowing school officials to look into the demographic data, norms, and practices of those students who were not involved in these situations, as compared to those who were. Additional filtering can distinguish the responses of those students who demonstrated resiliency in responding from those who did not. Data at this level of specificity can inform local risk prevention planning and intervention.
Lastly, repeated delivery of the survey instrument will allow the school to evaluate effectiveness by comparing pre-and post responses on measures that assess norms and practices, as well as negative incidents.
In fall 2011, The Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use is seeking to partner with several schools to gather data. CSRIU does not have access to an Institutional Review Board to review this study. However, the research protocol ensures that the survey is anonymous and voluntary. Further, there are no questions that could place students at any risk. Students are informed of the anonymous and voluntary nature of the survey on the first page of the survey. An opt-out informed consent statement for parents is attached. The survey will be administered through Survey Monkey, an online survey service. A specific version of the survey will be established so that participating schools can have access to the data from their own students. CSRIU will assist schools in their analysis of this data.
CSRIU will aggregate the data from all schools for analysis and reporting. The identity of participating schools will not be publicly revealed. CSRIU will facilitate communication connections between the coordinators at the participating schools so that insight and practices can be shared.
Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D.
Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use
Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats: Responding to the Challenge of Online Social Cruelty, Threats, and Distress (Research Press)
Cyber Safe Kids, Cyber Savvy Teens: Helping Young People Learn to Use the Internet in a Safe and responsible Manner (Jossey Bass)
Cyber Savvy: Embracing Digital Safety and Civility (forthcoming, Corwin Press)