CONSTRUCTION OF A HOMESICKNESS-QUESTIONNAIRE - PRELIMINARY-RESULTS

This paper describes the first steps in the construction of a question naire to measure the vulnerability to develop homesickness. Based on a former study, comparing personality and behavioral characteristics of a group of soldiers suffering from homesickness (HS), a group with ps ychological problems of a different nature (PP) and a healthy controlg roup (HC), variables that differentiated best between the three groups were selected. This selection resulted in an 87-item questionnaire th at was subsequently administered to three newly formed, but comparable groups of military conscripts. By means of a principal component anal ysis the 87-item questionnaire was reduced to a 29-item questionnaire, containing five subscales: Extraversion, Dominance, Rigidity, Homesic kness experiences and Assertiveness. In general soldiers suffering fro m homesickness appear to be less extraverted, less dominant, more rigi d, report more homesickness experiences and are less assertive than bo th controlgroups. In addition, a low level of dominance and assertiven ess appeared to be characteristic of soldiers suffering from homesickn ess, both controlgroups scoring equally high on these variables. On th e basis of the sumscores on these five scales the percentage of cases correctly classified was 74.4% (HS vs PP group) and 83.5% (HS group vs HC group), which implies again in parsimony relative to the former st udy. Given the possibility of population bias and the retrospective na ture of the study results should be considered as preliminary.