The Privacy Longitudinal Study

With The Privacy Longitudinal Study, we surveyed and investigated privacy attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors in the German population. In our longitudinal study a representative panel of participants was surveyed five times over the course of three years between 2014 and 2017.

The aim of this survey is to help generate profound knowledge about the German population's attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions surrounding privacy. We are grateful that we were able to follow up on this aim with the support of the German Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF) and with the support of the “Forum Privatheit” (www.forumprivatheit.de) – an interdisciplinary research consortium that has been collaborating since 2012 on questions of informational self-determination and privacy.

At the core of the survey, we measured people’s behavior in different mediated and non-mediated communication settings. We believe that in Germany and around the globe, the term privacy is now mostly connected to the online world. However, online privacy has to be managed also through offline communication. Moreover, privacy in offline settings is also affected by our online communication. In our survey, we asked respondents to report their perceptions, behaviors, and beliefs regarding typical communication situations that they might encounter in all kinds of social media and – of course – in face-to-face communication.

Pls find further information on ongoing projects and publications here: https://osf.io/y35as/