Search results

The study focuses on adolescents and the influence the big five great personality traits – extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experiences and conscientiousness – on self-disclosure. These personality traits, combined with the ability to cope with stress, determine the degree of threat felt by an individual towards their information, their evaluation of their personal ability to keep their information secure, and their willingness to secure information.

Five questionnaires relating to the big five personality traits, self-disclosure, cognitive assessment, self-efficacy and IS awareness were distributed among 157 adolescents.

Readiness for IS. Furthermore, the study showed that the more ostentatiousness, agreeable, goal oriented and open the subjects are, the lower they will evaluate the threat to their information. A relationship was also revealed between the subjects' agreeableness, goal orientation and their information threat assessment. It was also found that the more extroverted, agreeable, conscientious and the more inclined to self-disclosure, the higher they evaluate their self-ability to handle threats to their information.

For IS behavior to become second nature to adolescents they must first be educated and trained to do so. Knowing what motivates them and, on the other hand, what hinders them, to practice IS can help build training models for teachers which may be adapted according to their personal traits, thus getting the most out of such programs.

This study examines the impact of personality traits on the degree of challenge experienced by individuals with respect to the threat on their information, the evaluation of their self-efficacy to secure the information and hence, their readiness to secure information.

The study's population consisted of 157 teachers from various educational institutions across Israel. We used five questionnaires to gather data.

Findings reveal a link between participants' personality traits, situation evaluation indicators and their readiness to secure information. Further, the greater subjects' information security awareness and familiarity with information security concepts, the better their application of the tools for securing information will be.

The importance of this research lies primarily in that it highlights the importance of individual differences while dealing with information security awareness. The findings constitute a theoretical and empirical basis for building tools toward guiding teachers to protect their information, as well as for devising educational and pedagogic programs for making a cultural change.