The SHQ is a 21-item measure with 7 statements for each of three dimensions: Metamessage Sensitivity; Liking of Humorous Situations, and Emotional Expressiveness. Respondents indicate their agreement to each statement on a four point Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). Ten SHQ items are reverse scored.

Provides an overall sense of humor score and separate scores for Metamessage Sensitivity, Liking for Humorous Situations, and Emotional Expressiveness.

Useful in correlational research for investigating relationships between sense of humor and other personality dimensions as well as measures of psychological and physical health and well-being.

Note: The author recommends that researchers who wish to use the original SHQ, should either exclude the Emotional Expressiveness items because of low reliablities or use the more recently developed SHQ-6 for the measurement of sense of humor.

Internal consistency tends to be low to moderate for Metamessage Sensitivity (alpha = .47 to .59), Liking for Humorous Situations (.52 to .65), Emotional Expressiveness (.35 to .62). Test-retest reliabilities tend to fall in the .60 to .75 range.

Svebak, S. (1974). A theory of sense of humor. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 15, 99-107.

Svebak, S. (1974). Revised questionnaire on the sense of humor. Scand. Journal of Psychology, 15, 328-331.

Svebak, S. (1996). The development of the Sense of Humor Questionnaire: From SHQ to SHQ-6. Humor:      International Journal of Humor Research, 9, 341-361.