Vision: Developing a broad usable security & privacy questionnaire

Abstract

We aim to develop a questionnaire that measures privacy and security knowledge, attitude, and behavior on a broad level with a wide range of topics like authentication, smart home, web tracking, operating systems, mobile devices, instant messaging, and social media. To find relevant topics, we incorporated similar questionnaires and expert advice given by researchers and public institutions. In addition, we organized a workshop with Ph.D. students and also conducted expert interviews. We generated 276 items based on the derived topics, which we are currently evaluating for comprehension. So far, 20 end-users evaluated most of our items, with almost all evaluated items being comprehensible. We conduct this pilot testing on our items to reduce the number of items. These items will be used for a first validation with a representative sample of the German population. Our final questionnaire will consist of around 30 items, which we will further validate and translate into other languages. We plan to conduct a long-term study with the final questionnaire to determine changes in people's security and privacy knowledge, attitude, and behavior over time.