Abstract :
[en] Over the past few decades, virtual reality (VR) has become a valuable tool in research and clinical psychology (Riva et al., 2020). The sense of presence is defined as the user’s feeling of being inside the virtual environment and is a key concept of immersion in VR (Diemer et al., 2015). Although several self-reported presence questionnaires already exist, very few of them are validated in French, and generally fail to integrate the assessment of the social aspects induced by the avatars present in the virtual environment. In order to address these issues, the present study aimed at validating a new questionnaire of presence based on Slater’s model (2009) and on Biocca and colleagues’ model (2003). In particular, we based our questionnaire on the assessment of four dimensions of presence: place presence, plausibility presence, social presence and copresence. We developed a 12-item questionnaire and validated it in a VR snowball fight game among 149 participants. Confirmatory factor analysis with four latent variables revealed a good fit of the data to the model (χ2(48)=59.12, p=.13, RMSEA=.39, SRMR=.38; CFI=.99; TLI=.99). Furthermore, we observed good internal consistency (place presence: α =.88, plausibility: α =.92, social presence: α =.80, copresence: α =.70). In conclusion, it seems like this new questionnaire could accurately assess the sense of presence in French-speaking participants.
