Computing students' views on ethics

Abstract

Computer ethics is a pressing matter and today's students are evidently at-risk when they are confronted with ethical decisions since they may not possess the necessary knowledge and awareness to discern and make the right decisions. The primary aim of this study was to gain insight into computing students' attitudes, perceptions and understanding of relevant ethical issues. This quantitative study was conducted over six years (2014 -- 2019) at a university in South Africa and a total of 3571 first-year computing students participated in the study by completing the questionnaire. Results indicated that the majority of the students believe that it is unethical to download copyrighted content but some students still admitted to often downloading copyrighted content and music. Furthermore, these first-year computing students do not all consider the misrepresentation of online identities as unethical and they present a neutral attitude towards the copying of the university's copyrighted software. Additionally, results indicated that there were no significant differences in participants' computer ethics views based on gender, academic performance or years. The paper concludes with some recommendations regarding information security and ethics at universities and IS departments.