Methodological approaches to boredom and its measurement

Abstract

The goal of this chapter is to review the methodologies used to assess boredom. The most widely used methods are self-report measures in the context of experimental research and cross-sectional surveys. We expand upon previous reviews of dispositional and situational self-report measures of boredom by presenting the established as well as recently developed psychometric scales, which are used to assess trait and state boredom in general and in domain-specific contexts, such as education, work, or sports. Next to retrospective state scales, probe-caught methods are used in experimental boredom research. In these experiments, participants are tasked to report their levels of boredom when a probe interrupts their current task. The subjective nature of self-reported boredom has motivated researchers to combine these measures with behavioral, physiological, and neurological markers. In the last part of this chapter, we will review this work, which reports promising results and encourages further research to identify the measures that are sensitive to boredom. In this last part of the chapter, we will also explore objective methodologies for studying boredom that are mainly based on human-computer interaction research. Methodological approaches to boredom and its measurementMost of us are familiar with the experience of boredom; however, when it comes to conceptualizing the experience, it is difficult to give a clear definition in lay terms. This might be because boredom is a multifaceted experience that includes different phenomenological aspects, such as unpleasantness, low arousal (but also high arousal), lack of engagement, lack of control, and lack of meaning, to mention only a few characteristics (see chapter XX of this book). A growing number of studies have investigated the construct of boredom in terms of its antecedents and consequences, but also more broadly in terms of its affective, behavioral, cognitive, and neurophysiological correlates (see chapter XX of this book). Furthermore, differences within and between the tendency to get bored have been observed. For example, the experience of boredom seems to peak during adolescence and diminish with age (e.g., Spaeth et al., 2015). As another example, individuals suffering from traumatic brain injury have been shown to score higher on boredom proneness when compared to healthy controls (Goldberg & Danckert, 2013). Also, boredom has been shown to share variance with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (Malkovsky et al., 2012). In a related vein, researchers have highlighted factors that depend on personality (i.e., internal factors) as well as those contingent upon the situation (i.e., external factors) to explain the experience of boredom.In sum, the past few years have seen a surge of empirical research and theoretical accounts of boredom in a wide range of domains, especially in psychology.Given the diversity, vagueness, and subjectivity of the experience of boredom, it is not surprising that methodological approaches to its measurement have sometimes b...