Humor Styles in Healthcare Professionals: A Correlational Study.

Using humor as a caregiving strategy can help professionals perceive daily and work-related events from a more optimistic and light-hearted perspective. The main objective of this study was to analyze humor styles among health care professionals. A cross-sectional and correlational design was employed. Data were collected using the Humor Styles Questionnaire, which measures four humor styles: affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating humor. Health care professionals scored higher in positive humor than negative humor. Age exhibited a negative correlation with positive humor. Significant differences were observed between marital status and affiliative and self-enhancing humor, professional category and hospital unit with aggressive humor, shift work and self-enhancing humor, and type of contract and experience with affiliative humor. Health care professionals employ various humor styles based on their social and work contexts. It is crucial for health care professionals to receive training in the use of positive humor to consciously avoid humor styles that can hinder well-being.

Validation of the humour styles questionnaire in healthcare professionals.

AIM: The aim of this study is to determine the reliability and validity of the Humour Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) in a sample of Spanish healthcare professionals. DESIGN: A cross-sectional study. METHODS: The version of HSQ translated into Spanish by Cayssials and Pérez was used to validate on a sample of healthcare professionals (N = 250). The reliability analysed the Crombach's α coefficient and Pearson's correlation coefficient between the factors and the total scale score. The Exploratory Factor Analysis was carried out with Kaiser's criteria for the extraction of factors with Varimax rotation. RESULTS: HSQ in this study sample reproduced the similar structure of the original version with four factors (affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive and self-defeating humour). These factors explained 44.46% of the total variance and Cronbach's ranged from 0.64-0.79. Global HSQ scale reliability was 0.82. CONCLUSION: The HSQ is a valid and reliable instrument for assessing humour in healthcare professionals.

Design of an instrument to measure humor in health professionals.

AIM: The objective of this study was to develop an instrument for measuring humor in health professionals. METHODS: Observational, transversal and descriptive study of mixed methodology. The instrument was designed in several phases: literature review, item generation, determination of the scale format, review by the expert panel, pilot study, reevaluation by the expert panel, and test-retest. The pertinence, relevance and comprehension of the items were analyzed. Interobserver agreement was calculated with Kappa and the intraclass correlation coefficient considering values ≥0.61. Pared sample Student's t test and Pearson's correlation coefficient were used. A level of statistical significance was established at P < 0.05. RESULTS: The Three-Dimensional Scale of Humor in Health Professionals consists of 50 items measured with a 5-point Likert scale based on the degree of agreement. Experts' panel evaluated the global scale with 3.57 (0.79) points out of 5. An interobserver reliability of 0.69 (P < 0.001) was obtained in the pilot study. A Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.71 (P = 0.002) and an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.69 (P = 0.001) resulted in the test-retest. No statistically significant differences were observed between test-retest scores. CONCLUSION: The Three-Dimensional Scale of Humor in Health Professionals is an innovative tool for measuring humor in the health context. This scale is created specifically for health professionals. It's necessary its validation in future studies.