Purpose The purpose of this paper is to address participants’ humorous provocations as a part of informal interactions between participants and researcher that can be treated just like the research data. By means of autoethnographic analysis, the author explores the expectations of the researcher and participants that humour research entails and discusses how different expectations are revealed in participants’ provocations. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses an autoethnographic approach to discuss the informal interactions between participants and the researcher gathered during research into staffroom humour. The informal interactions in general and humour specifically were recorded, analysed, coded, interpreted and theorised just like the data on humour between participants. The theoretical framework used in the study combines Goffman’s (1959) version of symbolic interactionism and Solomon et al. (2006) idea of hybrid spaces. Findings The study shows the need for reconsideration of expectations entangled in humour research and proposes to be prepared for unexpected. Expecting unexpected can help stay open minded in the field and in interactions with participants and apply healthy distance towards own research and own expectations. The study shows that whenever certain behaviour was expected and different behaviour was delivered, there was a chance for certain behaviour being interpreted as provocations. Participants’ provocations can result from their own expectations about the research or what they think is expected from them by the researcher and thus they remain subject to different interpretations. Research limitations/implications Further research could investigate and discuss the role of humour in participant-researcher interactions in different research contexts and across different methodologies. Combining and analysing experiences of use of humour from both participants and researchers could allow for creating the guidelines in the use of humour in different research situations. Ethical challenges posed by informal interactions between researcher and participants could be explored further and suggestions as to how to protect the researcher, research and participants in such interactions could be developed. Originality/value This paper aims to be a starting point for a discussion about the understudied relationship between expectations humour research is entangled with and participants’ provocations. The study shows innovative approach to informal interactions between participants’ and researcher which are treated as research data and are theorised using original combination of symbolic interactionism and hybrid spaces. The study contributes to the qualitative research methodology by discussing the ethics of both using humour with participants and recording and analysing informal humorous interactions between participants and the researcher.

Objectives: Humor plays an important role throughout life, including old age. However, appreciating and understanding humor may be hindered due to dementia and late-life depression, two common old age-related diseases. Still little is known about humor preferences among the elderly diagnosed with dementia, depression or both disorders. This study aims to explore humor preferences in elderly participants with those disorders and their influence on the perceived funniness of more and less cognitively challenging verbal jokes.Methods: A total of 36 elderly participants and 39 students (representing a control group) rated 20 humorous and 20 non-humorous examples. To test the differences in the funniness rating between the elderly participants and the control group, both Welch’s <i>t</i>-test and <i>U</i> Mann-Whitney test were used, accompanied with bootstrapped confidence intervals.Results: The study reveals that the elderly participants found both humorous and non-humorous examples funnier than the control group. Elderly participants rated two types higher than the control group: the visual error-based jokes and non-visual metaphor-based jokes. The patients with a single disorder (cognitive disorder or depression) rated the funniness of the examples highest. Out of all participants with a single disorder, those with cognitive disorder rated the examples slightly higher than those with depression.Conclusion: Elderly participants are able to enjoy simple and familiar humor. While the perceived funniness of those with a single disorder may be a result of them using humor as a coping mechanism, such a mechanism no longer works in the case of coexisting dementia and depression.

Purpose-With particular reference to qualitative humor research, this paper aims to look at fieldwork from a new angle. The purpose of this paper is to address humor research foci by completing a fusion autoethnographic analysis of how lead author used humor to interact with the participants. This analysis outlines the two examples of joke-ability; specifically self-deprecating humor and more generally attempts to blend in. Design/methodology/approach-This paper draws on fusion autoethnography where Author 2 actively worked to help Author 1 push deeper into her use of humor and its historical context within her life. This created a dialogue to deepen the self-analysis on Author 1's humor methodology. Findings-The use of humor, by humor researchers, may be of particular importance if the researched groups, society, or nation values humor in both formal and informal contexts. Researcher's humor can be a spontaneous and dynamic way of learning and engaging with the researched environment. Originality/value-This paper aims to be a starting point for the discussion about the understudied issues of place and role of the use of humor by a humor researcher, and the challenges of conducting humor research within an educational context. The innovative fusion autoethnographic analysis helps to reflect upon researcher's role and behavior. The study contributes to humor research methodology by exploring the effects of researcher's use of humor on both the researcher-participant relationship and the data.