Abstract

Introduction: Recent studies showed the effect of socio-cultural context on how to set privacy. The aim of this study was to investigate the semantic structure of privacy in Iranian culture.
Method: In a cross-sectional study 100 (40 people in the first phase and 60 people in the second phase) were selected using convenience sampling method. In the first phase through producing the associative terms task, 9 most-frequent words was extracted that were associated with privacy. In the second phase the participants were evaluated the pair relationship between these words with using judged-similarity task.
Results: Correspondence analysis results indicate that the mapping of components in two dimensions. So that extracted components related with privacy on its individualistic and collectivistic basis. While the individualistic components express the universal principles of privacy, collectivistic components is a sign of cultural influences in defining of privacy.
Conclusion: Results are discussed in terms of the universal and culture-bond basis of privacy.

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