Holistic or Analytic: Does it Matter How Intention to Disclose Information is Measured?

Abstract

Information privacy studies regularly measure people’s intention to disclose information with holistic (general) or analytic (specific) measures. As researchers have endeavored to uncover differences in findings within privacy-related research, the nature of this measure has not been considered. This work demonstrates the differences in findings when intentions are measured holistically vs. analytically. We surveyed participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk and showed that measuring intentions analytically or holistically influences the results found. Overall, our study demonstrates the importance of measuring disclosure intentions analytically to better understand the factors that influence information disclosure. We discuss how these measurement decisions can influence future privacy research.