The value of data privacy during the COVID-19 pandemic: a new set of survey questions

Contact-tracing smartphone apps that rely on users' private data have been proposed as important tools in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. The use of these apps, however, has sparked new debates on the value of data privacy. Several earlier studies have investigated citizens' willingness to use such apps. We propose a set of questions as a new measurement instrument that goes beyond eliciting acceptance and aims at quantifying users' willingness to pay (WTP) for data privacy. We assess some aspects of the measurement instrument pertaining to its validity. We find central assumptions of our theoretical model met, suggesting that the instrument serves as a good starting point for measuring WTP. For example, we found a rather low WTP for data privacy in times of a pandemic, with high consent rates to data sharing and a majority of people who would pay amounts of up to 10€ only to not have to share data. Nevertheless, there are several improvements to the instrument possible that should be addressed by future research. We also encourage researchers to field the refined version in larger samples including the offline population

PIAAC 2012: Die wichtigsten Ergebnisse im Überblick

Die Organisation für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (OECD) untersucht mit dem Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Com-petencies (PIAAC) zentrale Grundkompetenzen in der erwachsenen Bevölkerung – wie die Lesekompetenz, die alltagsmathematische Kompetenz und technologiebasiertes Problemlösen –, von denen angenommen wird, dass sie für die erfolgreiche Teilhabe an der heutigen Gesellschaft von zentraler Bedeutung sind. Sie sind ein wichtiger Grundstein für die Entwicklung zahlreicher weiterer spezifischer Kompetenzen und Fertigkeiten. Mittels PIAAC sollen diese Schlüsselkompetenzen im Erwachsenenalter international verglichen werden. Der Fokus liegt hierbei auf der Bevölkerung im erwerbsfähigen Alter (16 bis 65 Jahre). Ergänzend hierzu werden in einigen Ländern, so auch in Deutschland, die Kompetenzen im höheren Alter untersucht, was insbesondere vor dem Hintergrund der Verschiebung des Renteneintrittsalters in Deutschland wichtige Informationen über den Kompetenzerhalt liefer

The use of respondent incentives in PIAAC: the field test experiment in Germany

In PIAAC, each participating country was required to attain a response rate of at least 50%, as long as evidence was provided that there was either no or only low nonresponse bias in the data. Achieving 50% is a challenge for face-to-face surveys in most Western countries and also in Germany. Previous research showed that the use of incentives is an effective tool to increase response rates in different kinds of surveys. However, incentives may have differential effects on certain socio-demographic groups, because the perceived benefits of an incentive are subjective. To assess the effects of incentives on response rate and nonresponse bias, an experiment with three incentive treatments (€10-coin, €25 and €50 in cash) was implemented in the German PIAAC field test. Results show that response rates increased as the incentive increased. With regard to nonresponse bias, the results are less explicit. According to logistic regressions, the main factors for participation in the €50 condition are age, citizenship, and municipality size and in the €25 condition, only municipality size. Bivariate analyses put these results into perspective. For all treatment groups, a low potential for bias is visible, and there is no statistical evidence that response distributions of the realized sample across treatments are different

Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), Germany - Extended version - microm data

This data set contains contextual information that describes either the household or the neighbourhood of the respondents and which was not included in the regular PIAAC Scientific Use File (SUF) ´PIAAC, Germany - Reduced Version´ (ZA5845) due to national data privacy legislation. This spatial data comes from microm Micromarketing-Systeme und Consult GmbH in Neuss, Germany. Using an identification number of the respondent, the corresponding information can be merged to the SUF and is available in the Secure Data Center in Cologne, Germany. The microm data available here include more than 100 variables from the microm domains Sociodemographics & -economics, Consumer Behavior, Area- & Site Planning, and Strategic Segmentation Models. Among other things, the corresponding indicators provide more information about: - Type of residential area; - Number of private households and businesses; - Sociodemographic and -economic characteristics related to social status, unemployment, family structure, number of children, life phases, confessions, share of foreigners or ethnic composition; - Mobility with regard to the relocation volume, relocation balance, population fluctuation, short and long distance relocations; - Affinity towards fundraising, communications and print media; - Sinus Geo-Milieus ®; - Purchasing power at the level of street sections. A more detailed description of geo and market data can be found on the microm homepage (only in German) and in the codebook