Big Brother Goes to School: Privacy Awareness and Parental Support for Technological Security Measures

ABSTRACT

Security measures present considerable concerns for student privacy. Parents might not be aware of these risks. This leads to the question: does parents' knowledge of the privacy implications of security measures in secondary schools affect their support for such tools? Using a randomized experimental design, I conducted ordered logistic and generalized ordered logitic regressions to investigate whether parents are less likely to support heightened security measures in secondary schools once alerted to potential privacy concerns. The findings suggest that exposure to information about cyber criminals and governments lead to decreases in parental support for new technological security measures. However, exposure to information does not change parents' levels of support for radio frequency identification tags and computer monitoring web-filters.

KEYWORDS:

• School security
• privacy
• parental support