THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSE OF HUMOR QUESTIONNAIRE - FROM SHQ TO SHQ-6

The development of the Sense of Humor Questionnaire (SHQ) is reviewed in six sections. First, early approaches to sense of humor assessments are reviewed to the extent that these approaches provided a reference for the need of a new scale. A second section presents the ideas and evaluations that guided the overall approach to the preliminary SHQ co ntent formation. A third section describes the content of the pre-publ ished SHQ and problems that emerged from the use of this scale in empi rical research. The 1974 revision of the SHQ is presented in a separat e section along with the available information on its psychometric cha racteristics and an evaluation of its usefulness in empirical research . A fifth section offers a review of some of the findings from other g roups using the SHQ and a final section describes the content and psyc hometric properties of a recent six-item revision of the SHQ (SHQ-6) t hat appears to overcome some of the shortcomings of the previous versi ons of the scale. The SHQ-6 items and scoring format are included.