Content Validity and Metric Properties of a Pool of Items Developed to Assess Humor Appreciation

Abstract

This research deals with assessing humor appreciation and highlights some of the strategies that can be used in two necessary stages in the construction of a test: the content validity study and the item analysis. First, we analyzed the content validity of a battery of 200 items developed to assess humor appreciation. Second, we analyzed the metric properties of the selected items by means of two studies. The first study was a pre-pilot analysis of the items in a sample of 212 participants, and the second study was a new item analysis in a sample of 344 Spanish people aged between 18 and 71 years. To determine content validity, we calculated interjudge agreement on item-facet theoretical match. Each item was assessed by seven judges, and the selection criterion used was a minimum agreement of 70%. This procedure led to eliminating 27 items.Subsequent item analyses led to a preliminary proposal for a 40-item scale (Escala de Apreciación del Humor, EAHU [Humor Appreciation Scale]) with appropriate descriptive statistics as well as discrimination and homogeneity values. The internal empirical structure of the scale matched the operative definition of humor appreciation, and the Cronbach’s alpha of the EAHU scores ranged from .72 to .89.