Sabir, R. I., Idrees, M.,

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The article Impact of Risk Behaviour and Downloading Attitude on Individual Ethics, by Dr. Raja Irfan Sabir, Mehran Idrees and Muhammad Shahnawaz (2015) analyses the relationship between illegal downloading and individual ethics, identifying the impact of illegal downloading, risk behaviour and downloading attitudes regarding students ethics. The article explains that advanced technology has played a big role in the growth of illegal downloading and piracy of software. The authors describe that someone’s ethical behaviour depends on whether or not they would steal a CD and also what their views are on illegal work and risk behaviour. Illegal downloading is a quick and easy way to attain media, but at the same time it has a significant negative impact on the music industry and economic factors also affect ethical behaviour within society.

Authors Sabir, Idrees and Shahnawaz (2015) conduct a quantitative study through the use of a questionnaire in COMSATS Institute of Information Technology with a sample of 100 students who are all within different departments. The authors key objectives for this study is to discover the relationship between illegal downloading and individual ethics, as well as check the impact of illegal downloading, risk behaviour and the downloading attitudes on student ethics. Prior to conducting the study, the authors formulate two hypothesises. The first one being that risk behavior and downloading attitude has negative impact on individual ethics. The second one being that risk behavior and downloading attitude have no relation with individual ethics.

In the data analysis section, the authors make it clear that correlation and regression were used to analyze the data because hypothesis and relational and one dependent variable were used in the study. Durban Watson test and scatter plot were applied by the authors to fulfill the linearity and autocorrelation assumption. The results found that illegally downloading software and stealing a CD would be more prevalent than buying it. The authors conclude by stating that advancements in technology have made it easier to access media through piracy and illegal downloading. They state that there must be ethical training to teach those about what is ethical and what is unethical. The understanding of student’s ethical judgment is important for the future of the music industry.

The authors have a section dedicated to limitations and future research direction which mentions that the study is specific by only using COMSATS Students for the sample. By including other students from various universities, the results may have varied and been more accurate. They also recognize that the sample was small and in the future they would include a wider variety of students from other universities.

Some weaknesses that this article has is that it is very unclear about certain things, in specific, the findings and data that were retrieved from the study. It is difficult for readers to make use of the study without stating what was revealed after the study occurred. It also seems that the English in this article is not very strong, as there are missing words, or synonyms that do not make sense, and bad grammar. This may be because the authors are from Pakistan and the first language in Pakistan is Urdu, not English. At times this can be difficult for readers to interpret the content of the article as a whole.

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