The development of a humour styles questionnaire
Lucy James, Joanne Page, Claire Fox
for younger children
Keele University, Staffs, UK
Email: v2q55@students.keele.ac.uk
Background and Rationale
Method
Fox et al. (2011) developed a reliable and valid scale to access
adaptive and maladaptive humour in school children (known as the
child HSQ) with four sub-scales to assess affiliative, self-enhancing,
self-defeating, and aggressive humour. Although it successfully
assessed these humour styles in children from 11 years, findings
suggested it is inappropriate for use with younger age groups.
The aim of the research was to adapt the child HSQ in an attempt to
successfully assess humour in children aged 8-11 years.
It was also suggested that only affiliative and aggressive humour can
be assessed in this age-group as use of self-defeating and selfenhancing humour may develop later.
•
•
Affiliative (adaptive) - making others laugh, enhancing social
relationships
Aggressive (maladaptive) - making people laugh at the
expense of others
Martin (2007) stated that aggressive humour may be detrimental to
the self in the long-term as it could be responsible for alienating
others. Aggressive humour has been found to be negatively
correlated with social adjustment measures (e.g. Yip & Martin, 2003).
Kuiper et al. (2004) stated that affiliative humour is used to enhance
social and interpersonal relationships. Positive correlations between
affiliative humour and social competence have been identified in
adults (Martin et al., 2003) and children (Fox et al., 2011).
Masten (1986) supported the idea that both humour creation and
appreciation are socially facilitating and highly valued characteristics.
The current research also assessed whether self-reported use of
affiliative humour is positively correlated with humour creation and
appreciation.
In total, 250 children aged 8-11 years (school years 4, 5 and 6) from 2
primary schools took part in the study: 121 boys and 129 girls (mean
age = 9.27 years, SD = .91).
Measures:
• HSQ for younger children, developed by the researchers, based
on the child HSQ (Fox et al., 2011) including16 items measuring
affiliative and aggressive humour on a four point scale: 1 = not at all
like me, 2 = not like me, 3 = a bit like me, 4 = a lot like me. A high
score indicates greater use of that humour style. Flesch readability
score of the 16 items = UK year 4 level).
• e.g. Affiliative
“My jokes and funny stories make people
laugh”
Aggressive “When I tell jokes, I do not think about who I
might upset”
•
Children’s self-perceived social competence – SPSC
(Harter,1985): 6 items from Harter’s self-perception profile for
children were used to measure how well children perceive they get
on with other children.
•
Humour appreciation: Based on the methods used by Masten
(1986), children were shown 4 cartoons using a character called
Ziggy and asked to rate how funny they were on a five-point scale: 1
= not very funny at all, 2 = not funny, 3 = a bit funny, 4 = funny and 5
= very funny. 3 cartoons were deemed ‘funny’ with 1 neutral cartoon.
•
Humour creation: Children were asked to write a funny caption for
two cartoons containing the character Ziggy. Captions were then
rated in terms of how funny they were by researchers (using a 3point scale) with checks for inter-rater reliability. This method was
based on those employed by Masten (1986).
Hypotheses
Results
•
There will be a positive correlation between affiliative
humour and self-perceived social competence
There will be a negative correlation between aggressive
humour and self-perceived social competence
There will be a positive correlation between affiliative
humour and humour appreciation and creation.
•
•
References
- Fox, C. L., Dean, S. & Lyford, K. (In
press). Development of a humour
styles questionnaire for children and
young people. Humour.
- Martin, R. A., Puhlik-Doris, P., Larsen
G., Gray, J. & Weir, K. (2003).
Individual differences in use of humor
and their relation to psychological wellbeing: Development of the Humor
Styles Questionnaire. Journal of
Research in Personality, 37(1), 48-75.
- Masten, A. S. (1986). Humor and
social competence in school-aged
children.Child Development, 57(2),
461-473.
Conclusions
•
•
•
•
A reliable measure of humour styles in younger children has been developed.
Further validation work is needed.
Need to explore other methods of assessing humour creation and appreciation.
Longitudinal work to determine causal relationships between humour styles and measures of
social competence would be beneficial.
• Qualitative work would be useful to explore the possibility of assessing self-defeating and selfenhancing in younger children
• On the basis of item analysis 2 items were deleted
and using the remaining 14 items a clear two-factor
structure was identified.
• Cronbach’s alphas were calculated for each of the
measures used : Affiliative humour = .84; Aggressive
humour = .86; SPSC = .65; Humour Appreciation =
.73; Humour Creation = .56.
• A positive correlation was found between affiliative
humour and SPSC (boys and girls)
• There was a negative correlation between aggressive
humour and humour appreciation in boys.
• There was a positive correlation between humour
appreciation and affiliative humour (girls)
Table. Intercorrelations between measures for males and
females
Aff
Agg
SPSC
App
Cre
Aff
--
.11
.36*** .21*
.09
Agg
.05
--
-.04
-.12
-.03
SPSC .28**
.01
--
.02
.17
App
.04
-.19*
.10
--
.21*
Cre
.06
-.10
.07
.10
--
Males below the diagonal, females above. *p<.05,
**p<.01,***p<.001.