Validating the Narrative Transportability Scale With Children 9 - 13

• In Event: Measuring Key Concepts and Considering Emotional Well Being in CAM

Abstract

Narrative transportability determines how likely an individual is to become involved in a story. Past research has suggested that involvement may be central to understanding narratives and to motivating reading behaviors in children. Unfortunately, measures of transportability have not been validated with children, and transportability’s relationship to theoretically-derived outcomes (e.g., leisure reading) is not known. To address this gap, children 9 -13 years of age (N = 136) completed a revised version of Dal Cin and colleagues (2004) transportability scale. A 13-item version of the scale was found to be unidimensional, reliable, and predictive of 6% of the variance in leisure reading (when controlling for gender, age, reading ability, and student performance). Transportability was also related to genre preferences and some gender effects. The transportability scale provides researchers with a psychometrically sound measure of narrative involvement to advance research in several fields, including mass communication, narrative research, and reading studies.

Authors

• Katheryn R. Christy, Ohio State University

• Jakob D. Jensen, U of Utah

• Melinda Krakow, U of Utah

• Kevin John, U of Utah