Development and validation of the child humor orientation scale short-form

Abstract

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.