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Validity and Reliability of the Scale Internet Users' Information Privacy Concern (IUIPC) [Extended Version]

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Thomas GrossORCiD

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).


Abstract

Internet Users' Information Privacy Concerns (IUIPC-10) is one of the most endorsed privacy concern scales. It is widely used in the evaluation of human factors of PETs and the investigation of the privacy paradox. Even though its predecessor Concern For Information Privacy (CFIP) has been evaluated independently and the instrument itself seen some scrutiny, we are still missing a dedicated confirmation of IUIPC-10, itself. We aim at closing this gap by systematically analyzing IUIPC's construct validity and reliability. We obtained three mutually independent samples with a total of N=1031 participants. We conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on our main sample. Having found weaknesses, we established further factor analyses to assert the dimensionality of IUIPC-10. We proposed a respecified instrument IUIPC-8 with improved psychometric properties. Finally, we validated our findings on a validation sample. While we could confirm the overall three-dimensionality of IUIPC-10, we found that IUIPC-10 consistently failed construct validity and reliability evaluations, calling into question the unidimensionality of its sub-scales Awareness and Control. Our respecified scale IUIPC-8 offers a statistically significantly better model and outperforms IUIPC-10's construct validity and reliability. The disconfirming evidence on the construct validity raises doubts how well IUIPC-10 measures the latent variable information privacy concern. The sub-par reliability could yield spurious and erratic results as well as attenuate relations with other latent variables, such as behavior. Thereby, the instrument could confound studies of human factors of PETs or the privacy paradox, in general.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Gross T

Publication type: Report

Publication status: Published

Series Title:

Year: 2020

Pages: 1-59

Online publication date: 23/11/2020

Acceptance date: 05/11/2020

Report Number: arXiv:2011.11749

Institution: arXiv preprint

URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.11749


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