A cross-media presence questionnaire: The ITC-Sense of Presence Inventory

The presence research community would benefit from a reliable and valid cro ss-media presence measure that allows results from different laboratories t o be compared and a more comprehensive knowledge base to be developed. The ITC-Sense of Presence Inventory (ITC-SOPI) is a new state questionnaire mea sure whose development has been informed by previous research on the determ inants of presence and current self-report measures. It focuses on users' e xperiences of media, with no reference to objective system parameters. More than 600 people completed the ITC-SOPI following an experience with one of a range of noninteractive and interactive media. Exploratory analysis (pri ncipal axis factoring) revealed four factors: Sense of Physical Space, Enga gement, Ecological Validity, and Negative Effects. Relations between the fa ctors and the consistency of the factor structure with others reported in t he literature are discussed. Preliminary analyses described here demonstrat e that the ITC-SOPI is reliable and valid, but more rigorous testing of its psychometric properties and applicability to interactive virtual environme nts is required. Subject to satisfactory confirmatory analyses, the ITC-SOP I will offer researchers using a range of media systems a tool with which t o measure four facets of a media experience that are putatively related to presence.