Construction and Validation of Cyber Harassment Experience Scale (CHES)

The aim of this study was to develop indigenous, valid, and reliable measure to assess the experiences of cyber harassment in young women. An initial item pool of 69 items was generated through focus group discussion, in-depth interviews with victims and experts dealing with cases of cyber harassment including Cyber Crime Wing, Judges, lawyers, and experts from NGOs. A preliminary scale was administered to a sample of 365 young women, aged between 18 and 30 years (M = 20.81, SD = 2.71), from four public and private sector universities in Lahore. The participants were selected using a purposive sampling strategy. Principal component analysis with Varimax rotation postulated 54 items with four factors named as unauthorized use of identity information, use of sexual content, cyber terrorization, and intimidation that accounted 66.74% variance. Cronbach’s alpha for the final scale was .98 and ranged .86 to .98 for the emerged factors. The results indicated that CHES is a reliable and valid measure for assessing experiences of cyber harassment in young women. This study may be helpful for the development and evolution of programs designed to alleviate harassing behaviors in cyber space considering the severity of the issue.