Instruments of the Study.

An online questionnaire was chosen to be research instrument to obtain information from the
respondents. This method was more effective rather than interviewing them face to face. The
questionnaire was given out to UiTM Shah Alam students either they had been cyberbullied or
they witnessed them.

The questionnaire consists of four sections to address the objectives of the study. Section 1 was
about the background of the respondents. In section 2, three questions were set to find out the
cyberbullying awareness level among UiTM students while 5 questions were issued in section3
to determine the reason of why cyberbullying occurred. Lastly, in section 4 was designed to
find out recommended measures to overcome cyberbullying among the students. All questions
are all multiple choice questions.

Significant of the Study.

This study would benefit the Ministry of Higher Education, the Ministry of Communications
and Multimedia, student psychology department of UiTM and the UiTM university students
itself. The findings provided some insights into cyberbullying occurrence level among UiTM
students and highlighted the dark areas that would warrant immediate actions from the
authority especially the Ministry of Higher Education as well as the Ministry of
Communications and Multimedia. This would help the ministry to find ways in order to
overcome this problem effectively before it becomes phenomenal. Besides, UiTM, the
university itself can endorse a campaign to raise cyberbully awareness level and the
consequences of cyberbullying among the university students. They might also conduct further
investigate whether cyberbullying affect the academic performance and the mental health of
the students.

Previous study.

Based on Balakrishnan (2015) on his research conducted on 393 Malaysian youths (17 to 30)
indicates that cyber bullying is still prevalent even after schooling years. When tested against the
respondents’ demographic background, the research shows females outnumbered males as bullies and
victims, younger respondents engage in cyber bullying more than older respondents, and lastly, those
who spend two to five hours online daily are open to cyberbullying (as both victims and bullies) than
those who spend an hour daily. This result indicates that cyberbullying is still taking place but not as
rampant as observed among the younger Internet users. Cyberbullying is a growing problem because
increasing number of young people use computers, cell phones, and other interactive devices as their
main form of social interaction.( Hinduja and Patchin (2011, pp. 49)

In another study conducted by Zalaquett and Chatters (2014), predominance of cyber bullying among
college populations ranges from 10% (Smith & Yoon, 2012) to 28.7% (Hinduja & Patchin, 2010). Smith
et al. (2006) have identified seven mediums of cyber bullying from their research, among them are text
messages (SMS), pictures and video clips, phone calls, emails, chat rooms, instant messages (IM), and
also web sites .Cyberbullies does not have any fear of getting caught and keep on using social media as
a platform to attack their victims countlessly. (Chait, 2006). Abu Bakar et al. (2013) said today’s new
technologies and online communications allows them to attack anyone on anytime and becoming more
aggressive against time as they are hard to be identified.

Unfortunately, in Malaysia, results indicated that there is a lack of awareness regarding cybercrimes
and its related laws among active Internet users (Mazni, Zeti, & Aini, 2014). Smith and Yoon (2012)
argued that despite many research on cyberbullying, there are limited number of studies done
specifically on students in tertiary education level.