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3.2 Measurement
While demographic information such as gender, age, educational level, employment status served as control variables in this study, the independent variables were measured by users’ years of using Facebook and average hours per day spent on Facebook, personal privacy orientation, knowledge toward Facebook’s privacy policy, privacy concerns and negative experiences on Facebook. Meanwhile, the dependent variables were users’ profile privacy settings and privacy protection strategies, namely the frequency of the measures they took to manage their privacy on Facebook. The measurement for the variables was detailed as the following.
Respondents’ demographic information included their gender, age (M=3.34; SD=1.26), educational level (M=3.91; SD=0.63), and status of employment. Time spent on Facebook included their years of using Facebook (M=4.71; SD=1.62) and average hours spent on Facebook on a daily basis (M=3.06; SD=1.64).
Personal privacy orientation (Cronbach’s alpha=0.81; M=16.09; SD=2.48) was measured by four (4) items adapted from Marshall (1972). Users were asked to evaluate the following statements such as “I do not usually share personal information with my acquaintances,” “I do not like sharing personal information with others, unless they are my close friends,” “I find my privacy on Facebook important” and “I find my privacy on Facebook important.” Respondents then answered the question based on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from “1=strongly disagree” to “5=strongly agree.”
Knowledge toward Facebook’s privacy policy (Cronbach’s alpha= 0.38; M= 1.23;
SD=0.83) was measured by three (3) items, which were knowledge-type questions adapted from the current privacy policy on Facebook. Respondents were presented with specific questions on posts, timelines and account deletion, such as “[whenever] you post on Facebook, you can choose among three privacy settings: Sharing with the public, with friends or with a customized list,” “whenever you hide a post from your page, it is equivalent to
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deleting the post,” and “whenever I delete my Facebook account, all of my records will be removed immediately.” Respondents would then choose whether or not the statements were correct. The items were dichotomous in nature, and the questions that were answered correctly would be recoded as “1,” whereas the ones mistaken would be coded as “0.”
Negative experience (Cronbach’s alpha= 0.75; M= 0.13; SD=0.61) was measured by a total of eight (8) items, which are modified from the Madden (2012) on privacy management on social media sites. Participants were asked if they had any of the experiences such as
“losing a job/ academic opportunity,” “threatened financially,” “threatened physically,” and
“damaged their reputation” because of “what I posted or shared on my page” and “because of what others posted or shared on my page.” In the questionnaire, respondents selected all that apply to them. For the ones they selected, the items were recoded as “1.” For the ones they did not select, they were recoded as “0.”
Privacy concerns on Facebook (Cronbach’s alpha=0.94; M=46.62; SD=7.86) was measured by twelve (12) items adapted from Krasnova, Kolesnikova & Guenther (2009) and Mcknight, Lankton & Tripp (2011). Respondents were asked about how concerned they were regarding particular types of information they submitted on Facebook, such as the location and timestamp that they logged in on Facebook. In addition, they were asked about how concerned they were with the content (texts, photos and videos) either they posted or others posted on the respondents’ profiles, which could be misused or used by third parties without the respondents’ consent. Statements included “the location I am at when I use Facebook is known by others,” “the timestamp of my Facebook activities are known by others,” “I cannot control what others post about me on Facebook,” “others finding my personal information on Facebook,” “the texts other posted on my wall being misappropriated by the third party,” “the photos other posted on my wall being misappropriated by the third party,” “the videos other posted on my wall being misappropriated by the third party,” “the texts I posted on my wall being misappropriated by others,” “the photos I posted on my wall being misappropriated by
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others,” “the videos I posted on my wall being misappropriated by others,” “Facebook may share my personal information with advertisers,” and “Facebook may share my user information (such as which pages I browse) with advertisers.” Based on the statements, the respondents would then choose a response from a 5-point Likert scale ranging from “1=not concerned at all” to “5=very concerned.”
Privacy settings on their profiles (Cronbach’s alpha=0.93; M=59.14; SD=20.32) were measured by twenty (20) items. Respondents were inquired regarding the privacy setting on their profiles, including work information, education information, with whom respondents were in a relationship with, family relationship, places respondents had lived, birth date, birth year, relationship status, blood type, interests, religious views, political views, mobile phone number, address, photos respondents uploaded, videos respondents uploaded, tags, music they liked, movies they liked and notes they uploaded. Given the current privacy setting on Facebook, respondents then selected their current settings to share the 20 items among
“1=public,” “2=friends,” “3=friends except acquaintances,” “4=only [themselves]” or
“5=never provided that information on Facebook.” Also, the more private the settings, the stricter the setting since it meant the audience was more strictly monitored.
Privacy protections strategies (Cronbach’s alpha=0.86; M=19.83; SD=6.23) were measured by nine (9) items. The items were partially adapted from Madden (2012) on privacy management on social media sites. The items included the following such as “hid status updates from particular Facebook friends,” “deleted a Facebook friend,” “removed the name tags of yourself from a certain photos,” deleted posts on your page which were made by your Facebook friends,” “asked a Facebook friend to delete content about you,” “ignored or refused someone’s friend request on Facebook,” “selectively blocked someone on Facebook that are your family members or friends,” “turned off cookies on [their computers],” and
“deleted [their] Facebook account.” The respondents then selected the ones that applied to them from a 5-point scale, where “1=never,” “2=seldom,” “3=sometimes, “4=usually” and
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“5=always.” To sum up, the descriptive statistics of constructs were detailed below.
Table 3.1 Descriptive statistics of constructs Construct Internal factors influencing Facebook users’ privacy management in Taiwan. According to Facebook (2013), a daily active user referred to a registered Facebook user who logged in and visited Facebook through the website or a mobile device, took an action to share content or activity with his Facebook friends, or connected via a third-party website or app that was integrated with Facebook on any given day. Therefore this thesis used the same definition to recruit daily active users in Taiwan. Having established the definition of an active daily user on