Measuring Narrative Engagement

“…reactions to the depicted events, two questionnaires were administrated immediately after each story: the narrative engagement questionnaire [6] that assesses how well people are immersed in a narrative (scale 0 to 72); and a measure of perceived similarity (“perceived homophily”) [39]…”

“Third, media use, especially the use of audio-visual (TVor video) content, is an immersive activity (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009) and provides users with an enjoyable distraction from their everyday responsibilities (Hofmann, Vohs, & Baumeister, 2012).”

“Only participants who watched Happier Meals completed the Narrative Engagement Scale (NES; Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009) and the Perception of Narrative Performance Scale (PNPS; Lee, Hecht, MillerDay, & Elek, 2011; Miller, Hecht, & Stiff, 1998) at followup.”

“Narrative Engagement was measured using the Narrative Engagement Scale (NES, [8]), which measures four aspects of narrative engagement: narrative understanding - reverse coded items to measure the understanding of the narrative, e.g., “I had a hard time recognizing the thread of the story”,…”

“Studies suggest that an audience member’s enjoyment of media content influences their perceptions of featured media characters (e.g., Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009; Cato & Carpentier, 2010; Lewis, Weber, & Bowman, 2008; van Leeuwen, Renes, &Leeuwis, 2013).”

“Three of the questions were taken from a narrative realism measure of Busselle and Bilandzic (2009): (a) I understood why the events unfolded the way they did, (b) at some points in the story, it was not quite clear why something happened (reverse coded) and (c) At points, I had a hard time making…”

“…in the very moment of reception; Green, Brock and Kaufman, 2004), narrative engagement (“more engaging narrative experiences are more enjoyable”; Busselle and Bilandzic, 2009, p. 327), identification with the characters (placing oneself in the protagonist’s shoes and momentarily assuming…”

“Identification with the character was assessed via a scale developed by Cohen (2001) and tested by Busselle and Bilandzic (2009). Items included, ‘‘At important moments in the story, I could feel the emotions the characters=people in the story felt,’’ and ‘‘I understood the reasons why the characters=people in the sto…”

“Indeed, narrative transportation itself is closely related to fluency: it occurs more readily when information is processed smoothly and when consumers construct vivid internal representations of the narrative [6,21,33].”

“We adapted established scales [5, 22, 41, 71] to address our research questions.”

“Individuals’ engagement with the message was assessed using a scale developed from previous studies’ factor analyses on narrative engagement (Busselle and Bilandzic, 2009; De Graaf et al., 2009), and was adapted for message-type stimuli.”

“For example, Busselle and Bilandzic [19] created a narrative engagement measure including “narrative understanding”, “attentional focus” and “narrative presence”.”

“July 2022; Vol 10 No 3 165 users can experience the 3 factors (24).”

“Three items were taken from the narrative engagement scale (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009; e.g., “My understanding of the characters is unclear.”).”

“Identifying with a character portrayed in a movie or a story is generally correlated with accepting story-consistent attitudes (e.g., Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009).”

“To further understand the effectiveness of stories, scholars have analyzed audience narrative engagement (e.g. Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009; Green, Brock, & Kaufman, 2004; Riley, Thainiyom, Murphy, & Latonero, 2014; Slater, Rouner, & Long, 2006).”

“…from the source novel, where no differences were found between film and text in the degree to which the audience reported that they were transported by the experience (Green et al., 2008); transportation and narrative engagement have been found to highly correlate (Busselle and Bilandzic, 2009).”

“…natural manifestations or second-order representations of those states in another, while maintaining awareness of self and other as distinct subjects of experience (e.g., Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009; Coplan, 2004; Decety, 2015; Denham, 2000, 2015, 2017, 2021; Mar & Oatley, 2008; Mar et al., 2011).”

“19 studies used the transportation scale developed by Green and Brock (2000), and 10 used the scale by Busselle and Bilandzic (2009).”

“Narrative engagement refers to the level of attention, emotion, or other cognitive resources dedicated by individuals to immerse themselves into a narrative (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009).”

“The engagement component of gratification affects the social construction of mediated reality, and the perceived reality is the result of the cultivation effect (Busselle and Bilandzic, 2009).”

“Participants’ engagement with the narrative video was measured using the first two sub-dimensions—narrative understanding and attentional focus of the scale adapted from Busselle and Bilandzic (2009).”

“Viewers of narratives are engaged when they feel “ lost ” in a story, with all their mental systems and capacities focusing on events occurring in the narrative (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009; Green & Brock, 2000; Strange & Leung, 1999).”

“Transportation can be seen as a “flow” experience in constructing mental models of a story that is accompanied by the positioning of oneself in the story world (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2008).”

“The increased focus on the plot can create vivid mental imagery and promote the overall state of transportation (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009; Samur et al., 2021; Van Laer et al., 2014).”

“Disruptions to mental model generation and maintenance may reduce engagement with a narrative (Busselle and Bilandzic, 2009).”

“…(2009) narrative engagement scale, which was developed as a response to perceived shortcomings in the original transportation scale (e.g., Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009; Oliver et al., 2012; Slater et al., 2006), includes two items from Green and Brock's (2000) question battery, so that…”

“The results for these follow-up questions are reported in Appendix C. 3 Transportation involves mental imagery and emotional engagement with characters (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009; Green & Brock, 2002).”

“This 12-item scale is highly correlated with Green and Brock’s (2000) Transportation Scale (rs= .73–86; Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009).”

“Narrative understanding was measured with three items taken from Busselle and Bilandzic (2009): (1) I had a hard time making sense of what was going on in the story; (2) My understanding of the characters is unclear; and (3) I had a hard time recognizing the thread of the story.”

“This questionnaire contains 12 items that probe four dimensions: narrative understanding, attentional focus, emotional engagement and narrative presence [7].”

“…& Vorderer, 2006; see Appel, Koch, Schreier, & Groeben, 2002; Odağ, 2011, for a comprehensive discussion and integration of these concepts in the context of research on reading; see Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009; Oliver & Bartsch, 2009, for a recent overview of these concept in media psychology).”

“…for narrative effect is narrative engagement , which is closely related to narrative transportation and encompasses four additional dimensions critical to narrative processing: narrative understanding, attentional focus, emotional engagement and narrative presence (Busselle and Bilandzic, 2009).”

“Next, we used 11 items that Busselle and Bilandzic (2009) created during the development of their Narrative Engagement scale to measure readers’ tendency to take the perspective of the main character and share their emotions.”

“They were modified from the items of the narrative engagement survey developed by [4].”

“Stressing the importance of these effects, Green & Brock [28] proposed the transportation-imagery model (TIM) according to which individuals understanding stories may become highly engaged (transported) in a narrative, experiencing a state of intense cognitive and emotional focus on the story (see also [29]).”

“These mental constructions fuse a person’s pre-existing knowledge with information contained in the narrative text (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009).”

“17 The NES measures narrative engagement across four dimensions: attentional focus, narrative presence, emotional engagement, and narrative understanding.”

“We measured the degree of engagement to the TV show’s narrative through the Measuring Narrative Engagement Questionnaire (MNEQ) (Busselle and Bilandzic 2009).”

“Correspondingly, their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors tend to match the viewpoints proffered in the narrative (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009; Green & Brock, 2000; Slater & Rouner, 2002).”

“Attentional focus, emotional engagement, and narrative presence, in turn, refer to an immersive viewing experience in which the viewer typically loses awareness of one’s surroundings, of himself/herself, and of time (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009).”

“…attracted considerable interest in some disciplines (e.g., communication sciences, virtual reality engineering, some aspects of literary studies: Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009; Gerrig, 1993; Green & Brock, 2000; Kuijpers, Hakemulder, Tan, & Doicaru, 2014; Ryan, 2001, 2015; van Laer, de Ruyter,…”

“…with television characters measured the two central components of identification—empathy (e.g., “I can feel the emotions the characters feel”) and cognitive perspective taking (e.g., “I can easily imagine myself in the situations of some of the characters”; Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009; Cohen, 2001).”

“(68) also design an ad hoc UX scale based on the International Test Commission—Sense of Presence Inventory (ITC-SOPI) (75), Narrative Engagement Scale (76), and intrinsic motivation inventory (77).”

“Introducing NCI as a dimension helps to explore cultural differences in how Chinese audiences interpret the plot of American animated films (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009).”

“Narrative presence refers to the sensation that allows the audience to immerse themselves in a narrative environment, departing from reality [69].”

“…transportation (Green and Brock, 2000), a state in which individuals are immersed into the story world and picture themselves being part of the story events, is a process wherein individuals mentally simulate the alternative mental model presented in narratives (Busselle and Bilandzic, 2009).”

“(Busselle and Bilandzic, 2009), when watching movies or reading stories.”

“3, below) mapped the subjective experience of participants through the narrative engagement scale [6].”

“A model that is arguably most relevant to the psychological study of film was put forth by Busselle and Bilandzic (2009).”

“…engagement model takes a more detailed approach, analyzing, for example how consumers make sense of the narrative (narrative understanding), or how they experience the emotions of the characters and develop their own emotional reactions to them (emotional engagement) (Busselle and Bilandzic, 2009).”

“This type of engagement has been referred to as “ transportation ” (Green & Brock, 2000), “ narrative presence ” (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009), or “ immersion ” (Jacobs, 2015b).”

“In discussions of absorption in a narrative world, the reader ’ s deictic shift to the world of the text is regularly conceived as singular identification with the narrator ’ s or a primary character ’ s frame of reference (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009, p. 323; Kuijpers et al., 2014, p. 93).”

“Busselle and Bilandzic (2009) establish a direct link between the intensity of the PSR and its sway over audience attitudes and beliefs.”

“The process of selection is outlined in Figure 1.”

“…narrative-based studies have shown that emotions such as fear, happiness, joy, sadness, disgust, and anger may affect message outcomes (see, e.g., Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009; De Graaf, Hoeken, Sanders, & Beentjes, 2009; Green & Brock, 2000; Hoeken & Fikkers, 2014; McQueen, Kreuter, Kalesan, &…”

“To the researchers’ knowledge, there were no fixed guidelines to validate a video narrative for patient education; however, there has been a link between the construct of engagement and persuasive communication [26].”