Measuring Quality of Mediated Social Communication

We recently developed the Holistic Social Presence Questionnaire (HSPQ) to measure the quality of mediated social communication experiences. Initial re-search confirmed the content and face validity of the HSPQ. This study investi-gates the convergent validity and sensitivity of the HSPQ. Participants completed a decision-making task in groups using either Microsoft Teams or Mibo to com-municate with each other. Upon completing the task, participants rated items from the HSPQ and the validated Networked Minds Questionnaire (NMQ). We ex-pected that Mibo would induce a stronger sense of social presence than MS Teams, since it involves self-movement, orientation, group-forming and spatial audio. The HSPQ showed convergent validity with the NMQ: the ratings on both questionnaires were significantly correlated. However, both the NMQ and HSPQ indicated that participants experienced no significant difference in social presence between both conditions. Hence, further research involving a more immersive communication tool that induces a stronger sense of social presence is needed to assess the sensitivity of the HSPQ.