Construction and Validation of the German Questionnaire to Assess Students' Perceptions of Teacher Humor

The construction and validation of the German Questionnaire to Assess Student Perceptions of Teacher Humor, a translation and adaptation of the Teacher Humor Scale (Frymier, Wanzer & Wojtaszczyk, 2008), is reported. The scale consists of 17 items assessing four types of teacher humor, namely humor related to course material, humor unrelated to course material, self-disparaging humor, and aggressive humor. A study with 890 high school students in Years 9 and 10 from 41 different school classes was conducted to test the quality of the measuring instrument. Results from confirmatory factor analyses on the student level and two-level exploratory factor analyses supported the hypothesized structure with four factors. Subsequently constructed subscales demonstrated a good internal consistency. Convergent and discriminant validity was supported by correlations with student, teacher and class characteristics. It can be concluded that the new questionnaire is a reliable, valid and parsimonious measuring instrument, which can be used in several contexts.