Ehm. Eurelingsbontekoe et al., CONSTRUCTION OF A HOMESICKNESS-QUESTIONNAIRE - PRELIMINARY-RESULTS, Personality and individual differences, 19(3), 1995, pp. 319-325
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.