Development of Japanese Version of GELOPH Scales in Undergraduates

Gelotophobia has been defined as the fear being laughed at by Ruch & Proyer(2005). The present studies were carried out to develop the Japanese Version of GELOPH Scales to assess the individual differences in Gelotophobia. In study I, the original version of GELOPH was translated in Japanese, and some items were revised considering Japanese clutural context. This translated version of 46 items were conducted to 346 Japanese undergraduates. Cronbach alpha was satis- factory for these 46 items(α=.96). As Ruch & Proyer(2007)suggested that only 15 items could assess the tendency of Gelotophobia,factor analysis led to the shorten version of 15 items. Cronbach alpha was satisfactory for this scale(α=.88). Although this shorten version had fewer items than original version, this translated version is reliable. Therefore this shorten version was named J-GELOPH( Japanese Version of Gelotophobia). As the cumulative percentage of expla- nation above factor analysis was below 30%, the another factor analysis postulating two factors was conducted. This analysis led to revised version of J-GELOPH. This revised version named J- GELOPH-R, had two factors: Mental load and Suspicion,each of the two factors included 10 items. Cronbach alphas were .88 for Mental load and .86 for Suspicion, and these alphas were sat- isfactory. In Study II, 246 undergraduates were asked to conduct J-GELOPH-R and Self-reference scale(Kaneko, 2000), to clarify the validity of J-GELOPH-R. According to Kaneko(2000), the tendency of self-refenrence could be an expression of concern about others. Correlations of Self- reference score with Mental load and Suspicion in J-GELOPH-R scales were.50 and .30, respec- tively.These correlations were satisfactory for confirming the validity of J-GELOPH-R. These results were interpreted as indicating that J-GELOPH -R was reliable and valid, and that the valid- ity of J-GELOPH-R should be examined precisely for further research.