Development and Validation of the Need for Privacy Scale (NFP-S)

ABSTRACT

The need for privacy has been gaining importance in various disciplines and areas of communication, including computer-mediated, interpersonal, and health communication. These disciplines require reliable measurement of the need for privacy across different contexts. We propose a theoretical concept of the need for privacy as a personality trait and develop a multi-dimensional scale. In Study 1, we developed and tested the Need for Privacy Scale (NFP-S) using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (German internet users, n₁ = 3,278; n₂ = 1,226). The results support a second-order model with three first-order factors, i.e., informational, psychological, and physical need for privacy; social need for privacy was identified to be inherent to the three other dimensions and as such not a dimension on its own. The 12-item scale was validated with regard to loneliness, online privacy concerns, sex, online data protection and online information disclosure. In Study 2, we confirmed the factorial structure with a representative sample of N = 1,000 German internet users. We validated the scale with a self-assessment of the need for privacy, offline and online privacy concerns, online privacy literacy, social media usage, online data protection and social media self-disclosure, and sociodemographics.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/19312458.2023.2246014.

Notes

¹ We also repeated all analyses with the remaining three waves; see the OSF project [https://osf.io/wb9vx/?view_only=221bb80c882f46d188fbf6b994f59bef] for the results. In the online supplement, we numbered the waves as in the original study; what we call T₂ in this article is T₅ in the OSF project.

Additional information

Funding

The first study was funded by a grant from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, Funding number: 16KIS0094) awarded to Sabine Trepte.

Notes on contributors

Regine Frener

Regine Frener is a PhD candidate at the School of Communication at the University of Hohenheim, Germany. She is interested in gender studies and how it relates to privacy and self-disclosure.

Jana Dombrowski

Jana Dombrowski is a PhD candidate at the School of Communication Science at the University of Hohenheim, Germany. Her areas of research are social media privacy and media screen time.

Sabine Trepte

Sabine Trepte (PhD) is a professor for media psychology at the University of Hohenheim, Germany. Her research focuses online self-disclosure and privacy from a psychological perspective.