INFORMATION PRIVACY - MEASURING INDIVIDUALS CONCERNS ABOUT ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES

Information privacy has been called one of the most important ethical issues of the information age. Public opinion polls show rising levels of concern about privacy among Americans. Against this backdrop, rese arch into issues associated with information privacy is increasing. Ba sed on a number of preliminary studies, it has become apparent that or ganizational practices, individuals' perceptions of these practices, a nd societal responses are inextricably linked in many ways. Theories r egarding these relationships are slowly emerging. Unfortunately, resea rchers attempting to examine such relationships through confirmatory e mpirical approaches may be impeded by the lack of validated instrument s for measuring individuals' concerns about organizational information privacy practices. To enable future studies in the information privac y research stream, we developed and validated an instrument that ident ifies and measures the primary dimensions of individuals' concerns abo ut organizational information privacy practices. The development proce ss included examinations of privacy literature; experience surveys and focus groups; and the use of expert judges. The result was a parsimon ious 15-item instrument with four subscales tapping into dimensions of individuals' concerns about organizational information privacy practi ces. The instrument was rigorously tested and validated across several heterogenous populations, providing a high degree of confidence in th e scales' validity, reliability, and generalizability.