Privacy of Information (Fabricating Personal Information)

What it measures

A three-item likert scale designed to measure the degree to which a person says he/she would provide false or limited data at a particular website to protect his/her personal information.

Response format

7-point Likert (1=strongly disagree, 7=strongly agree)

Scale items

• I would consider making up fictitious responses to avoid giving the Web site real information about myself.
• I would resort to using another name or Web/e-mail address when registering with this Web site so I can avoid revealing my real identity.
• When registering with this Web site, I would only fill up data partially.

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

Formal validity assessment was not reported by the original authors. Items formalised from behaviors identified in Fox et al. (2000) Pew Internet & American Life Project report. Also integrated into Communication Privacy Management (CPM) research: see Child, J. T., Haridakis, P. M., & Petronio, S. (2012). Blogging privacy management. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 63(10), 2017–2031. α = .83–.88 reported across studies.

Citation

Lwin, M. O., & Williams, J. D. (2003). A model of integrating online privacy concerns, trust, and consumer defensive behaviors. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 22(2), 204–215.

Keywords