Searching the Resource Information Network
Are you sure you want to leave this community? Leaving the community will revoke any permissions you have been granted in this community.
This study examines whether coding open answers in a picture-based test, as to the extent they reflect the fear of being laughed at (i.e., gelotophobia), demonstrates sufficient validity to construct a semi-projective test for the assessment of gelotophobia. Previous findings indicate that cartoon stimuli depicting laughter situations (i.e., in the pilot version of the Picture-Geloph; Ruch et al., 2009) on average elicit fear-typical responses in gelotophobes stronger than in non-gelotophobes. The present study aims to (a) develop a standardized scoring procedure based on a coding scheme, and (b) examine the properties of the pilot version of the Picture-Geloph in order to select the most acceptable items for a standard form of the test. For Study 1, a sample of N = 126 adults, with scores evenly distributed across the gelotophobia spectrum, completed the pilot version of the Picture-Geloph by noting down what they assumed the protagonist in each of 20 cartoons would say or think. Furthermore, participants answered the GELOPH<15> (Ruch and Proyer, 2008), the established questionnaire for the subjective assessment of the fear of being laughed at. Agreement between two independent raters indicated that the developed coding scheme allows for objective and reliable scoring of the Picture-Geloph (mean of intraclass correlations = 0.66). Nine items met the criteria employed to identify the psychometrically most reliable and valid items. These items were unidimensional and internally consistent (Cronbach's alpha = 0.78). The total score of this selection (i.e., the Picture-Geloph<9>) discriminated significantly between non-fearful, slightly, markedly, and extremely fearful individuals; furthermore, it correlated sufficiently high (r = 0.66; rc = 0.79 when corrected for reliability of both measures) with the GELOPH<15>. Cronbach's alpha (0.73) was largely comparable whereas the estimate of convergent validity was found to be lower in one (r = 0.50; rc = 0.61; N = 103) of the two samples in Study 2. Combining all three samples (N = 313) yielded a linear relationship between the self-report and the Picture-Geloph. With the Picture-Geloph<9> and the developed coding scheme, an unobtrusive and valid alternative instrument for the assessment of gelotophobia is provided. Possible applications are discussed.
Pubmed ID: 29209264
Publication data is provided by the National Library of Medicine ® and PubMed ®. Data is retrieved from PubMed ® on a weekly schedule. For terms and conditions see the National Library of Medicine Terms and Conditions.
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 19 million articles (over 3.6 million in English) have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site. As of July 2011, there were editions of Wikipedia in 282 languages. Wikipedia was launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger and has become the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet, ranking around seventh among all websites on Alexa and having 365 million readers. The name Wikipedia was coined by Larry Sanger and is a combination of wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning quick) and encyclopedia. Wikipedia''s departure from the expert-driven style of encyclopedia building and the large presence of unacademic content has been noted several times. Some have noted the importance of Wikipedia not only as an encyclopedic reference but also as a frequently updated news resource because of how quickly articles about recent events appear. Although the policies of Wikipedia strongly espouse verifiability and a neutral point of view, critics of Wikipedia accuse it of systemic bias and inconsistencies (including undue weight given to popular culture), and allege that it favors consensus over credentials in its editorial processes. Its reliability and accuracy are also targeted. A 2005 investigation in Nature showed that the science articles they compared came close to the level of accuracy of Encyclopedia Britannica and had a similar rate of serious errors.
View all literature mentions