Abstract
Background
Studies on children’s humor mainly focus on short-term effects of sense of humor and laughter. There is also evidence that children possess the predisposition to communicate humorously, labeled “Humor Orientation” (HO). All children possess some level of HO, but highly humor oriented children enact humor successfully and frequently, perceive situations more often as funny, and perform humorously across different interactions than low humor oriented children. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a short-form of the Child Humor Orientation Scale (Booth-Butterfield et al. 2011), a questionnaire assessing HO in children, and to analyze its relations to well-being.
Methods
After forward-backward-translation procedure, the CHO-Scale was validated in a sample of parents of 296 pre-school children (3–6 years). The CHO-Scale was shortened to 10 items on the basis of factor loadings and content-related aspects.
Results
Exploratory factor analysis of the CHO-10 revealed a two-factor solution. Reliability and Validity of the main score and the subscales are acceptable. Children with high HO show higher social competencies, emotion knowledge, quality of life, and lower trait anxiety.
Discussion
The CHO-10 Scale is suitable as a valid, reliable and economic measure of Child Humor Orientation.
About the authors
Marie Bischoff: Marie Bischoff is a PhD student at the Department Health and Prevention, University Greifswald, Germany. Her research interests concern child well-being, parent-child-attachment and naturalistic assessment methods.
Silke Schmidt: Silke Schmidt is professor of the Department Health and Prevention at the University Greifswald, German. Her research interests include health care research in chronically ill children and young people as well as lifetime quality of life.
Holger Muehlan: Holger Muehlan is PhD researcher at the Department Health and Prevention, University Greifswald, Germany. His main research interests are in the areas of methods development, diagnostic of quality of life and telematic methods.
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