Students' Orientation Towards Interpersonal Communication in Online Social Networking Sites

Interpersonal communication and privacy has been a subject of discussion long before the advent of computer networks, however, the notion of interpersonal communication and privacy has taken a dramatic turn due to the proliferation of information technology tools and applications, which is further aggravated by the social networking sites which allow users to display their profile information to be viewed and shared by millions of online visitors. This study empirically tested a theoretical model of the orientation of students toward interpersonal communication in online social network sites which according to literature constituted by three dimensional constructs. Random sampling procedure was carried out in two kulliyahs (Faculty) at International Islamic university Malaysia (IIUM), in which 340 students were selected from a population of 2000 undergraduate students. A total of 26 items tested from an instrument that has been used in previous studies, each item is expected to measure one of the three orientations dimension. The analysis result confirms that the orientation of students towards interpersonal communication in online social network sites is a multi-dimensional construct consisting of social attraction, physical attraction and task attraction. In addition, since substantial numbers of research studies have been reported to have employed one or more of these measures, this research was therefore examined to evaluate their reliability and validity. It is concluded that all these measures are reasonably reliable and valid. However, since the reliabilities found in literatures have been highly varied, it was therefore determined that improved measures should be used in the future. Thus, a revised and improved version of these measures using Confirmatory factor Analysis (CFA) are reported and recommended in this study for future research