Enriching research of parasocial experiences through better measurement of parasocial processing (PSP): The PSP short inventory

Abstract

Amid growing scholarly calls highlighting the theoretical importance of parasocial processing (PSP) for enabling closer accounts of users’ cognitive, affective, and conative reactions to media characters, communication research lacks a comprehensive short survey instrument for capturing PSP. The article overcomes this gap by introducing the PSP Short Inventory – a parsimonious short-scale measuring PSP as a multifaceted concept with nine items. Building on existing theory, PSP and its three components of cognitive, affective, and conative PSP are defined and conceptualized. A selection of items was derived to start the scale development, which then progressed through three preregistered studies (with 500 participants each). The analyses of the three studies combined exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and covered various reliability analyses and analyses of discriminant, convergent, and nomological validity. Based on the three studies, we find strong empirical evidence that the PSP Short Inventory provides a valid, reliable, and practicable PSP measure for future parasocial research. The theoretical and methodological advances enabled by the measure are discussed.