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The Psychometric Properties of a Preliminary Social Presence Measure Using Rasch Analysis

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Lifelong Technology-Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 11082))

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Abstract

Social presence is an important construct in computer mediated communication, such as found in online collaborative learning (OCL) settings. It is hypothesized that social presence influences the degree of perceived learning and learning outcomes of OCL group members. However, the construct social presence is contested as many incompatible definitions exist in the research community and so do the many measures of social presence. Also, none of the existing social presence measures has undergone a rigid construct validation process such as proposed by Rasch Measurement theory. As a result, hypothesis testing using these measures produced unreliable findings. To address this undesirable situation, we returned to the original definition of Short et al. [29] and redefined it as the degree to which the other person is perceived as physical ‘real’ in the communication. We present a social presence measure that assesses this perception of realness. Rasch analysis was used to validate the raw social presence measure. Our findings revealed that measuring the degree of realness was excellent for those who have high perceptions of realness of the other (i.e., they could be well differentiated), whereas this was moderate for those who have low perceptions (i.e., they could be less well differentiated). Our conclusion is that the social presence measure is already an improvement when compared to existing social presence measures that emphasize realness but it surely needs further improvement: those who have low perceptions of realness should equally well be differentiated as those with high perceptions of it.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Examples of social media tools are Whatsapp (http://www.whatsapp.com), Yahoo! Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com), Skype (http://www.skype.com), Instagram (http://www.instagram.com), and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com).

  2. 2.

    See, for example, http://research.microsoft.com/holoportation.

  3. 3.

    An additional benefit of adhering to social presence as realness of the other also enables us to investigate social presence in the context of virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) settings as it is compatible with the concept of telepresence advanced by telepresence researchers [e.g., 4]. Lombart and Ditton [21], for example, defined telepresence as “the perceptual illusion of non-mediation [of the other].” Rosakranse et al. [26] explored the role of social presence in VR settings and Kim et al. [14] in an AR-based telecommunication system.

  4. 4.

    Note that the requirement of uni-dimensionality does not mean that a construct cannot have more than one dimension. If a construct has more than one dimension, then the different items should assess all the sub-constructs underlying these dimensions; that is, one set of items will assess the first sub-construct, another set the second sub-construct and so on. However, for each set of items the requirement of uni-dimensionality would apply.

  5. 5.

    In Winsteps, the score assigned to a person (i.e., the respondent) is referred to as ‘measure.’ This is, thus, not to be confused with the meaning of measure as instrument to measure some trait or phenomenon such as social presence.

  6. 6.

    See http://www.limesurvey.org.

  7. 7.

    The logit is the unit in which the person and item measures are expressed [5, 6].

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Open Universiteit Nederland, Valkenburgerweg 177, 6419 AT, Heerlen, The Netherlands

    Karel Kreijns & Kamakshi Rajagopal

  2. FernUniversität Hagen, Universitätsstraße 33, 58084, Hagen, Germany

    Joshua Weidlich

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  1. Karel Kreijns
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  2. Joshua Weidlich
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  3. Kamakshi Rajagopal
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Correspondence to Karel Kreijns .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria

    Viktoria Pammer-Schindler

  2. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Providencia, Santiago de Chile, Chile

    Mar Pérez-Sanagustín

  3. DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education, Frankfurt, Germany

    Hendrik Drachsler

  4. RayCom BV, Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Raymond Elferink

  5. Open University Netherlands, Heerlen, The Netherlands

    Maren Scheffel

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Kreijns, K., Weidlich, J., Rajagopal, K. (2018). The Psychometric Properties of a Preliminary Social Presence Measure Using Rasch Analysis. In: Pammer-Schindler, V., Pérez-Sanagustín, M., Drachsler, H., Elferink, R., Scheffel, M. (eds) Lifelong Technology-Enhanced Learning. EC-TEL 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11082. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98572-5_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98572-5_3

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