Privacy & Surveillance 2025 (Dataset)
A de-identified open dataset (n=271) examining how adults perceive privacy, data collection, surveillance, and monitoring in digital and AI-enabled environments, including attitudes toward data use, consent, transparency, and trust across six English-speaking countries.
Measures include perceived digital surveillance, comfort with data collection, awareness of monitoring practices, trust in institutions and technologies handling personal data, perceived trade-offs between privacy and convenience or safety, behavioural adaptations to surveillance, and demographic variables across six English-speaking countries.
Part of the Human Clarity Institute’s AI–Human Experience Data Series.
Framework
HRL domain(s): Agency & Decision Autonomy, Trust & Epistemic Stability
Registry Construct Alignment: Responsibility attribution, Trust calibration, Risk perception
Listed constructs reflect longitudinal, registry-mapped item alignment and do not represent the full thematic scope of this dataset.
DOI and Repository Links
This dataset is archived in GitHub, Zenodo, and Figshare for long-term preservation.
Citation
APA
Human Clarity Institute. (2025). Privacy & Surveillance 2025 (Dataset). Human Clarity Institute. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18026084
BibTeX
@dataset{hci_privacy_surveillance_2025,
author = {Human Clarity Institute},
title = {Privacy \& Surveillance 2025 (Dataset)},
year = {2025},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.18026084},
url = {https://humanclarityinstitute.com/datasets/privacy-surveillance-2025/},
license = {CC-BY-4.0}
}
Licence
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
You are free to share, adapt, and build upon this dataset for any purpose, including commercial use, provided appropriate credit is given to the Human Clarity Institute.
Full licence text: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Study Methodology
This dataset forms part of the Human Clarity Institute’s Human–AI Experience research programme, examining how digitally active adults experience privacy, surveillance, data collection, and behavioural adjustment in digital and AI-enabled environments. The study focuses on perceived power imbalance, loss of control over personal data, normalisation of tracking, monitoring-related anxiety, self-censorship, platform avoidance, and whether AI systems are seen as increasing privacy and surveillance-related risk.
The research uses a cross-sectional online survey design to examine descriptive patterns in perceived surveillance, privacy-related concern, behavioural adaptation, autonomy, and AI-related privacy risk. It is intended to document how these experiences are reported within the sample, rather than test causal effects.
Data were collected on 19/12/2025 via the Prolific research platform from adults across six English-speaking countries. Participants provided explicit consent for anonymised open publication as part of HCI’s open research programme.
Sampling & participants
- Clean dataset: 271 valid responses
- Countries: Australia, United Kingdom, United States, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand
- Eligibility: Adults (18+) fluent in English
- Recruitment platform: Prolific
- Compensation: Average £11.05 per hour
- Approval-rate filter: None
- Attention checks: None
- AI-deception traps: None
- Anonymisation: Prolific IDs and timestamps removed before publication
Study limitations
- The survey uses a non-probability convenience sample and is not nationally representative.
- Results are based on self-reported responses and reflect perceived experiences of privacy, surveillance, and digital monitoring.
- The study uses a cross-sectional design, capturing responses at a single point in time.
- The dataset is descriptive and exploratory and does not support causal inference.
- Item bases can vary slightly across variables due to missing responses.