Revalidating the Boredom Proneness Scales Short From (BPS-SF)

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Abstract

Boredom proneness is a predictor of depression, loneliness, and job dissatisfaction. As such, the methods of measuring boredom proneness have gained additional scrutiny particularly regarding their little-understood psychometric properties and a heavy reliance on university student samples. The aim of the current research is to revalidate Vodanovich, Wallace and Kass's 12-item Boredom Proneness Scale Short From (BFS-SF; 2005) with a public consumer panel. We present three studies on two large-scale online surveys (n = 970) respondents from general public to test the dimensionality, reliability, and validity of the BFS-SF. Study 1 confirmed the two-factor model of the BFS. Study 2 validated BFS-SF against potential confounds of state boredom and curiosity. Study 3 demonstrated measurement invariance across samples and genders using the combined samples. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that the BFS-SF can be further reduced to 9 items, is well explained by a two-factor model, and most importantly it is valid and reliable measurement of boredom proneness.

Section snippets

What is boredom?

Despite a great deal of research on the topic, there is no accepted definition of boredom in the literature (Vodanovich, 2003). Boredom has been defined as the aversive experience of the frustrating of one's desire to engage in stimulating and satisfying activity (Fahlman, Mercer-Lynn, Flora & Eastwood, 2013), as well as an emotion characterised of lack of pleasure and aims (Craparo et al., 2013). More recent sociology research suggests that boredom or at least the experience of boredom may

Boredom proneness

In contrast to state boredom, boredom proneness is a personality trait, in particular an individual's disposition to experience boredom. Boredom proneness has been positively correlated with depression, loneliness and hopelessness (Farmer & Sundberg, 1986), job dissatisfaction (Kass, Vadanovich, & Callender, 2001) and internet addiction in adolescents with ADHD (Chou et al., 2018). The BPS has 28 items and uses a true-false question format for assessing individual's disposition to feel bored

The current research

To our knowledge, most prior research has validated the BPS or BPS-SF with a student sample and none has investigated how boredom proneness functions within a consumer context or within the general public population. There are a number of reasons why the scale itself and its factorial structure requires re-assessment: (1) As the scale was not developed based upon a single definition or unified theory of boredom, the items were not constructed to assess specific factors of boredom. This may have

Study 1: testing the factor structure of the Boredom Proneness Scale

Existing literature has generally validated measurement of boredom proneness with a student sample. Thus, the aim of Study 1 is to explore and confirm the dimensionality of the S.J. Vodanovich et al.'s (2005) 12-item BPS-SF within a general public sample. Specifically, a PCA and a CFA were conducted to examine the dimensionality or factorial structure of BPS-SF within a general public sample.

Methods

In order to generalise the results of Study 1, a second set of data

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