Validity and reliability of the scale internet users' information privacy concerns (iuipc)

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 to assert the validity and reliability of IUIPC-10. Having found weaknesses, we proposed a respecified instrument IUIPC-8 with improved psychometric properties. Finally, we confirmed our findings on a validation sample. While we found sound foundations for content validity and could confirm the overall three-dimensionality of IUIPC-10, we observed evidence of biases in the question wording and found that IUIPC-10 consistently missed the mark in evaluations of construct validity and reliability, 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 IUIPC-10’s construct validity raises doubts how well it measures the latent variable Information Privacy Concern. The less than desired 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.