Supervisors: Keld Pedersen & Michael Zaggl
Discussants: Irene Pollach & Carsten Bergenholtz

Abstract
My project concerns the sharing of personal health-related information and takes the perspective of trust. Research has shown that medical data collection initiatives can suffer from a lack of trust, which can lead to low patient/citizen participation and unrealised potential. The aim of my project is to investigate the antecedents and dimensions of, and factors affecting trust, and to figure out ways of increasing patient retention in data-collection programmes.

The first paper is a literature review on the antecedents of trust in the context of health information sharing from the perspective of the patient. It has already been submitted for publication, so I don’t plan to alter it dramatically. The second paper will concern the empirical validation of a part of the model that the first paper produced, as well as the study of the downstream effects of trust on data disclosure. As far as its methodology is concerned, I plan to perform experiments and surveys via existing mHealth apps that collect medical data. By manipulating perceptions of risk and perceptions of benefits I will study the effect of those variables on trust and the eventual effect on data disclosure (outcome variable could be agreement/disagreement to participate) or/and the app attrition rate. The survey will check for manipulation, collect demographic data and measure the level of dependent and independent variables. I have been in talks with contacts in the department of Public Health and they are interested in collaborating with me, so they should be my point of data collection. Finally, for the third paper I would be interested in expanding on the results of the second paper, possible by conducting qualitative research. The research question of this paper could concern a deeper understanding of risks and/or benefits.

Everyone is welcome!