Presentation of a systematic literature review at the ICA21 conference

Researchers from the Centre for Social Informatics (CSI) at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana (Jošt Bartol, and doc. dr. Andraž Petrovčič), participated in the 71st conference of International Communication Association with an original presentation entitled “Measuring information privacy concerns on social network sites: a systematic review of survey instruments”.

The authors posed three research questions: (1) Which survey scales for measuring information privacy concerns were used in the context of social network sites; (2) Which dimensions do the reviewed scales include; and (3) What are their psychometric properties?

To carry out the study, the authors adopted the Consensus based Standards for the selection of health Measurement INstruments (COSMIN) methodology. The study found that 35 different information privacy concern scales were used in the context of social network sites between 2009 and 2020. The most commonly included dimensions were concern about information collection, concern about lack of control over collected information, and concern regarding unauthorized access to information. The results also revealed a lack of studies assessing structural and cross-cultural validity of the identified scales.

The study was conducted as part of Jošt Bartol's Young Researcher fellowship, funded by the Slovenian Research Agency of the Republic of Slovenia, and co-funded from the research project J5-2558 (The Implications of Proxy Internet Use for the Internet Skills of Older Adults) and the research program P5-0399 (Internet research).