description
Privacy plays a role in many different situations, such as when we browse the internet, when we change our clothes in the swimming pool, or when we want to have intimate conversations with our loved ones in a restaurant. People can be expected to differ in how much they value privacy in general. To measure that, however, we need to have a measurement for ‘privacy as a value’. In this study, you will help to develop the measurement of the subdimension of social privacy as a value.
Values have been defined as “transsituational goals, varying in importance, that serve as guiding principles in the life of a person” (p.21, Schwartz, 1994). The latest version of the much used scale was extended to have 19 values in it, but did not include privacy (e.g. Schwartz et al., 2017). Huijts and Haans (2024) recently argued that privacy should also be in the scale and developed a first measure for it. Building further on various studies arguing that privacy is a multi-dimensional concept (e.g. Burgoon, 1982), the same researchers and various students developed and tested a three dimensional measurement of privacy as a value: informational/online privacy, observational privacy and social/interactional privacy (e.g. Jansen, 2024; Markink, 2024; Russa, 2024).
While being a very useful scale, the measurement of particularly social/interactional privacy still needs improvement. Social/interactional privacy has been defined as the control a person has over their interpersonal relationships and interactions (Burgoon, 1982) and was later emphasised to be about the “who, what, when and where of encounters” (p.133, Burgoon et al., 1989).
In this research project, you will improve the measurement of social/interactional privacy as a value and test its validity by examining how it correlates with other variables that one would expect it to correlate with, such as keeping strangers at a distance, and regulating your social interaction with colleagues or friends.
Research question
- Can we more reliably measure interactional privacy as a value and distinguish it from the other dimensions of privacy as a value?
- Does the improved measure of interactional privacy correlate with other variables in the way we would expect it to?
- Does the improved measure of interactional privacy predict how people interact with other people?
Research method
The research questions are addressed in a survey study
Data-analysis
The data of this study will be analysed by quantitative data analysis programmes such as SPSS or R.
Literature
- Burgoon, J. K. (1982). Privacy and Communication. Annals of the International Communication Association. https://doi.org/10.1080/23808985.1982.11678499
- Burgoon, J. K., Parrott, R., Le Poire, B. A., Kelley, D. L., Walther, J. B., & Perry, D. (1989). Maintaining and Restoring Privacy through Communication in Different Types of Relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 6(2), 131–158. https://doi.org/10.1177/026540758900600201
- Huijts, N. M. A., & Haans, A. (2024). Values as causes of emotions and acceptability in the digital risk context: an extension of the values scale with privacy. Journal of Risk Research, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2024.2423203
- Jansen, L. (2024). Privacy as a Value: Exploring the Integration of Privacy into Schwartz’s Value Theory [MSc t]. Eindhoven University of Technology.
- Markink, T. (2024). Privacy as a Value: Understanding conflicting values in the privacy paradox by using privacy as a distinctive value within Schwartz’s value theory [MSc thesis]. Eindhoven University of Technology.
- Russa, M. (2024). Can Social Privacy as a Value be Measured Reliably within a Romanian and German Sample, and Can It Explain Different Privacy-Related Behaviors? [BSc thesis]. University of Enschede.
- Schwartz, S. H. (1994). Are There Universal Aspects in the Structure and Contents of Human Values? Journal of Social Issues, 50(4), 19–45. https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1540-4560.1994.TB01196.X
- Schwartz, S. H., Cieciuch, J., Vecchione, M., Torres, C., Dirilen-Gumus, O., & Butenko, T. (2017). Value tradeoffs propel and inhibit behavior: Validating the 19 refined values in four countries. European Journal of Social Psychology, 47(3), 241–258. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2228
Information
This topic is available for 1 student.
Are you interested in this topic for your thesis? Please contact the theme coordinator Lynn Weiher: l.weiher@utwente.nl