Bachelor Thesis BCLR-2017-80

BibliographyHaas, Nico: Evaluation of “In-VR-Questionnaires".
University of Stuttgart, Faculty of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Information Technology, Bachelor Thesis No. 80 (2017).
67 pages, english.
CR-SchemaH.5.1 (Multimedia Information Systems)
Abstract

Within the past ten years virtual reality has grown up and the topic became omnipresent. As a result, accompanying research in the realm of VR has increased, too. The two most popular terms describing the quality in VR are “immersion” and “presence”. Presence is mainly defined as the sense of “being there”, i.e. the feeling of being in the virtual world (instead of the real world). Measuring the level of presence by evaluating presence-specific questionnaires is a a well-established technique. In a previous project my colleagues and I used a questionnaire that has been completed inside the VR. This was the first time to our knowledge an integrated questionnaire was applied in a Virtual environment (VE)) to this extent. While the project was conducted, the question arose whether these “In-VR-Questionnaires” can even improve Presence because the user inevitably cannot see the real world during the whole experience. In the scope of this thesis we carried out a study and conducted a factorial analysis variance to compare the main effects of the two different appearances of questionnaires (in VR vs not in VR) with other factors on presence. We did not find evidence that In-VRQuestionnaires (In-VR-Qs) have a significant effect on the experience in the virtual world in terms of presence. Yet, applying qualitative feedback like the “think aloud protocol” showed that there might be an increased focus completing the questionnaire in virtual reality (VR) and that In-VR-Qs may lead to more truthful answers of the participants. Furthermore, the collected data gave us more insight in the 3 chosen questionnaires and the correlations of their respective items. One result is the fact that a new presence questionnaire can be build on the basis of these data. Also we found item six of the IGroup Presence Questionnaire showing extremely high correlation in respect to the questionnaire itself which means this item may be used alone to achieve almost the same results as the whole 14-item questionnaire. Besides, the fact that both questionnaire appearances do not show significantly differences, also implies that you can choose which one you want to use depending on the present situation. Especially for research and gaming development like games during a testing phase, participants can give immediate feedback filling integrated questionnaires without leaving the VR.

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Department(s)University of Stuttgart, Institute of Visualisation and Interactive Systems, Visualisation and Interactive Systems
Superviser(s)Henze, Jun.-Prof. Niels; Schwind, Valentin; Knierim, Pascal
Entry dateDecember 3, 2018
   Publ. Computer Science