Willingness to Participate in Passive Mobile Data Collection

The goal of this study is to measure willingness to participate in passive mobile data collection among German smartphone owners. The data come from a two-wave web survey among German smartphone users 18 years and older who were recruited from a German nonprobability online panel. In December 2016, 2,623 participants completed the Wave 1 questionnaire on smartphone use and skills, privacy and security concerns, and general attitudes towards survey research and research institutions. In January 2017, all respondents from Wave 1 were invited to participate in a second web survey which included vignettes that varied the levels of several dimensions of a hypothetical study using passive mobile data collection, and respondents were asked to rate their willingness to participate in such a study. A total of 1,957 respondents completed the Wave 2 questionnaire.

Wave 1

Topics: Ownership of smartphone, mobile phone, PC, tablet, and/or e-book reader; type of smartphone; frequency of smartphone use; smartphone activities (browsing, e-mails, taking photos, view/ post social media content, shopping, online banking, installing apps, using GPS-enabled apps, connecting via Bluethooth, play games, stream music/ videos); self-assessment of smartphone skills; attitude towards surveys and participaton at research studies (personal interest, waste of time, sales pitch, interesting experience, useful); trust in institutions regarding data privacy (market research companies, university researchers, statistical office, mobile service provider, app companies, credit card companies, online retailer, and social networks); concerns regarding the disclosure of personal data by the aforementioned institutions; general privacy concern; privacy violated by banks/ credit card companies, tax authorities, government agencies, market research companies, social networks, apps, internet browsers); concern regarding data security with smartphone activities for research (online survey, survey apps, research apps, SMS survey, camera, activity data, GPS location, Bluetooth); number of online surveys in which the respondent has participated in the last 30 days; Panel memberships other than that of mingle; previous participation in a study with downloading a research app to the smartphone (passive mobile data collection).

Wave 2

Topics: Willingness to participate in passive mobile data collection (using eight vignettes with different scenarios that varied the levels of several dimensions of a hypothetical study using passive mobile data collection.
The research app collects the following data for research purposes: technical characteristics of the smartphone (e.g. phone brand, screen size), the currently used telephone network (e.g. signal strength), the current location (every 5 minutes), which apps are used and which websites are visited, number of incoming and outgoing calls and SMS messages on the smartphone); reason why the respondent wouldn´t (respectively would) participate in the research study used in the first scenario (open answer); recognition of differences between the eight scenarios; kind of recognized difference (open answer); remembered data the research app collects (recall); previous invitation for research app download; research app download.

Demography: sex; age; federal state; highest level of school education; highest level of vocational qualification.

Additionally coded was: running number; respondent ID; duration (response time in seconds); device type used to fill out the questionnaire; vignette text; vignette intro time; vignette time.