Cori Faklaris, Laura Dabbish, and Jason I. Hong, Carnegie Mellon University
We present SA-6, a six-item scale for assessing people’s security attitudes that we developed by following standardized processes for scale development. We identify six scale items based on theoretical and empirical research with sufficient response variance, reliability, and validity in a combined sample (N = 478) from Amazon Mechanical Turk and a university-based study pool. We validate the resulting measure with a U.S. Census-tailored Qualtrics panel (N = 209). SA-6 significantly associates with self-report measures of behavior intention and recent secure behaviors. Our work contributes a lightweight method for (1) quantifying and comparing people’s attitudes toward using recommended security tools and practices, and (2) improving predictive modeling of who will adopt security behaviors.
Open Access Media
USENIX is committed to Open Access to the research presented at our events. Papers and proceedings are freely available to everyone once the event begins. Any video, audio, and/or slides that are posted after the event are also free and open to everyone. Support USENIX and our commitment to Open Access.
author = {Cori Faklaris and Laura A. Dabbish and Jason I. Hong},
title = {A {Self-Report} Measure of {End-User} Security Attitudes ({{{{{SA-6}}}}})},
booktitle = {Fifteenth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2019)},
year = {2019},
isbn = {978-1-939133-05-2},
address = {Santa Clara, CA},
pages = {61--77},
url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/soups2019/presentation/faklaris},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = aug
}