Management and Innovation in Health Care, Faculty of Management, Economics and Society, Witten/Herdecke University, Alfred-Herrhausen-Str. 50, 58455 Witten, Germany.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Aug 2;19(15):9454. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19159454.
Health self-tracking is an ongoing trend as software and hardware evolve, making the collection of personal data not only fun for users but also increasingly interesting for public health research. In a quantitative approach we studied German health self-trackers (N = 919) for differences in their data disclosure behavior by comparing data showing and sharing behavior among peers and their willingness to donate data to research. In addition, we examined user characteristics that may positively influence willingness to make the self-tracked data available to research and propose a framework for structuring research related to self-measurement. Results show that users' willingness to disclose data as a "donation" more than doubled compared to their "sharing" behavior (willingness to donate = 4.5/10; sharing frequency = 2.09/10). Younger men (up to 34 years), who record their vital signs daily, are less concerned about privacy, regularly donate money, and share their data with third parties because they want to receive feedback, are most likely to donate data to research and are thus a promising target audience for health data donation appeals. The paper adds to qualitative accounts of self-tracking but also engages with discussions around data sharing and privacy.
健康自我追踪是一个持续的趋势，随着软件和硬件的发展，个人数据的收集不仅对用户来说很有趣，而且对公共卫生研究也越来越有吸引力。我们采用定量方法，通过比较德国健康自我追踪者（N=919）在同行中展示和分享数据的行为以及他们向研究捐赠数据的意愿，研究他们在数据披露行为上的差异。此外，我们还研究了可能对用户愿意将自我追踪数据提供给研究产生积极影响的用户特征，并提出了一个与自我测量相关的研究框架。结果表明，与“分享”行为相比，用户作为“捐赠”意愿来披露数据的意愿增加了一倍多（捐赠意愿=4.5/10；分享频率=2.09/10）。年龄在 34 岁以下、每天记录生命体征的年轻男性对隐私问题的关注较少，定期捐款，并与第三方分享数据，因为他们希望得到反馈，最有可能向研究捐赠数据，因此是健康数据捐赠呼吁的一个有前途的目标受众。本文不仅增加了对自我追踪的定性描述，还参与了围绕数据共享和隐私的讨论。
