Development, Standardization and Validation of the Dyadic Interactional Harmony (DIH) Questionnaire

The next step in the formation of our interactional methodology was the development of a new paper and pencil test called the Dyadic Interactional Harmony (DIH) questionnaire (Varga, Józsa, Bányai and Gősi-Greguss, 2006; see Appendix 1). The most important characteristic of this measure is its direct focus on the interaction itself, evaluated by the participants of the interaction themselves.

The main motive for the development of this questionnaire was to get a measure that is:

a) short and simple; b) easily applicable for parallel processing of the data; c) not specific for

hypnotic interactions; d) not restricted to experimental hypnosis sessions, but provides clinically meaningful data as well; e) suitable to characterize the degree and pattern of harmony between the interacting participants.

DIH lists 50 items: nouns and adjectives that are characteristic of various kinds if dyadic interactions. The interactants independently fill in the questionnaire indicating how much each feature characterized their recent interaction on a Likert-type scale, from 1 (not at all) to 5 (completely).

The Hungarian version of DIH was standardized in a sample of 256 subjects (Varga, Bányai, Gősi-Greguss, 1999), who were interacting in pairs in a non-hypnotic setting in a so called mutual Rorschach test situation (for the test see Engelbrecht, Arnold and Eraschky, 1987 and Loveland, Wynne and Singer, 1963). In the mutual Rorschach test situation the interacting partners should come to an agreement regarding the meaning of the ink-blots of the “classical” Rorschach-test. The standardization DIH data of Mutual Rorschach situation were factor analyzed, using iterated principle factor analysis with varimax rotation. Four factors were obtained, accounting for 72% of the common variance. On the basis of these factors, four subscales were created (3 positive and 1 negative), each having good internal consistency: 1. Intimacy (items like passion, love. Cronbach alpha: 0.85), 2. Communion (items like understanding, harmony. Cronbach alpha: 0.86), 3. Playfulness (items like humour, inspiring. Cronbach alpha: 0.81), 4. Tension (items like anxiety, fear. Cronbach alpha: 0.78). The cumulative explanatory values of these factors are: 42, 58, 66 and 72%

respectively. Appendix 2. shows the data of factoranalysis of DIH.

Of course after standardization we applied DIH to hypnosis sessions as well. At first data were collected on 232 subjects in standardized individual (E1: Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, Form A, SHSS: A, Weitzenhoffer and Hilgard, 1959) and 110 subjects in standardized group hypnotic sessions (E2: standardized protocol of Waterloo-Stanford Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form C, WSGC, Bowers, 1998), where other measures of hypnosis (e.g. hypnotic susceptibility, PCI) were applied to validate the DIH subscales on a hypnotic sample. In case of the individual sessions (E1) the measures were applied for the hypnotists (Hs) as well. The hypnotist (H) and the subject (S) completed the questionnaires independently.

The four subscales had good internal consistency in this hypnotic sample as well, as their Cronbach alpha values ranged from 0.77 to 0.92.

The subscales of DIH are not independent from each other (as can be seen in Table 3), as it was the case in the original standardization sample as well.

Table 3. Correlations of DIH subscales (data of the subjects)

Intimacy Communion Playfulness

Playfulness 0.59** 0.65** 0.62** 0.53** 0.63** 0.59** 1,00

Tension 0.03 -0.28** -0.06 -0.29** -0.41** -0.31** -0.17** -0.43** -0.25**

* p < .05; ** p < .01

Table 4. Correlations of the DIH subscales with the other tests in E1 DIH Scores of the subject DIH Scores of the hypnotist E1 N

Intimacy Communion Playfulness Tension Intimacy Communion Playfulness Tension SHSS-A 231 0.19* 0.18** 0.21** -0.07 0.33** 0.30** 0.29** -0.14*

PCI DC S 228 0.21** 0.01 0.21** -0.00 0.17* 0.15* 0.16* -0.00 PCI PA S 228 0.48** 0.16* 0.32** 0.02 0.11 0.14* 0.13* 0.01 PCI NA S 228 -0.02 -0.19** -0.10 0.50** 0.14* 0.06 0.01 0.02 PCI VI S 228 0.19** 0.11 0.13* -0.10 0.06 0.09 0.08 0.06 PCI IA S 228 0.14* 0.11 0.21** -0.00 0.09 0.13* 0.13* -0.04 PCI DC H 227 0.13 0.00 0.03 0.13 0.50** 0.29** 0.40** 0.27**

PCI PA H 227 0.11 0.00 0.01 0.05 0.82** 0.46** 0.62** 0.12 PCI NA H 227 -0.04 -0.03 -0.08 0.01 0.06 -0.14* -0.06 0.51**

PCI VI H 227 0.14* 0.05 0.06 0.00 0.14* 0.21** 0.17* -0.01 PCI IA H 227 0.12 -0.02 0.04 0.14* 0.58** 0.34** 0.45** 0.24**

S – scores of the subject; H – scores of the hypnotist (* p < .05; ** p < .01).

Table 5. Correlations of the DIH subscales with the other tests in E2 DIH Scores of the subject

E2 N Intimacy Communion Playfulness Tension WSGC 106 0.29** 0.27** 0.20* -0.22*

PCI DC 106 0.41** 0.29** 0.26** -0.09

PCI PA S 106 0.65** 0.41** 0.50** -0.22*

PCI NA S 106 -0.15 -0.27** -0.30** 0.63**

PCI VI S 106 0.19* 0.16 0.08 -0.06

PCI IA S 106 0,19* 0.16 0.08 -0.06

S – scores of the subject (* p < .05; ** p < .01).

Relationship of DIH with the other Measures of Hypnosis

The correlation coefficients of the subscales of DIH and the other measures (SHSS: A, WSGC and the 5 factor-based scales of PCI) are presented in Tables 4 and 5.

As it can be seen in Table 4 and 5, SHSS susceptibility scores of subjects have a low to moderate but significant positive correlation with their Intimacy, Communion and Playfulness DIH subscales. It means that high level of susceptibility is characterized by an intimate and playful atmosphere with better communion between H and S. Furthermore the above DIH scales of hypnotists show higher positive correlation with the SHSS values, so the perceived quality of the interaction by the hypnotists seems to be more closely related to the subjects’

hypnotizability scores than the DIH values of subjects themselves.

On the basis of their susceptibility scores the subjects were arranged into three groups of

“susceptibility range”: 0–4 Low susceptibility, 5–8 Medium susceptibility, 9–12 High

susceptibility^*. As there was no significant interaction of the “Experiment” and

“Susceptibility ranges” we report the comparison of Lows, Mediums and Highs on DIH subscales in a pooled sample of E1+E2.

In the pooled sample, a significant difference appeared in the case of the subjects'

“intimacy”, “communion” and “playfulness” scores (see Table 6) as a function of hypnotic susceptibility of the subjects, due to the Low hypnotic susceptibles, who gave significantly lower “intimacy” “communion” and “playfulness” scores than the Medium or High susceptibles.

Table 6. Comparing the means of the DIH subscales of the Low, Medium and High susceptible subjects

DIH scores of Ss

Pooled (N=337) Tukey Post Hoc test DIH subscale ^Low

Table 7. The DIH scores of hypnotists and subjects and their comparison by t-tests (in E1)

E1 (N=227)

* Analysing the distribution of susceptibility in the two samples of E1 and E2 we decided to rise the cutting value of the range for High susceptibles, to get a more suitable range for statistical analysis. That is why we do not exactly follow the conventional ranges of 0–4 for Low, 5–7 for Medium, and 8–12 for High.

Average DIH scores of Ss and Hs (E1)

0 1 2 3 4 5

Intimacy

Comm union

Playfulness

Tension

DIH subscales

DIH score

Ss Hs

Figure 2. The DIH scores of hypnotists and subjects on the four subscales. In case of all the subscales the difference is significant at p < .01.

Phenomenological Data from DIH

On the basis of the 227 hypnotic interactions of E1, the hypnotists’ and subjects’ DIH mean scores were calculated and compared to each other. The data of comparison of

“hypnotizing” and “being a subject” in a standardized hypnosis experiment on the 4 subscales of DIH are summarized in Table 7.

As it was seen, the difference between the average scores of the subjects and hypnotists is significant in case of all the subscales of DIH, but these differences are so small, that the similarity of subjects’ and hypnotists’ average scores in each DIH scale seems to be more important (see Figure 2.).

It can be seen in Figure 2 that the general patterns of the average scores of hypnotists and subjects on the 4 subscales do harmonize with each other. So these types of experimental hypnotic sessions are moderately intimate and playful interactions, with high level of felt communion, and some tension—according to the subjective judgments of both H and S.

As a summary we can say that the DIH questionnaire has good psychometrical features:

very high internal reliabilities for the subscales in the original (Mutual Rorschach sample), and in these hypnotic samples as well. The high correlation between the factors and subscales imply that basically “one thing” is measured by DIH, i.e., the “intimacy” subscale. This strongest factor has the highest explanatory value, but the three other smaller subscales may contain important information, occasionally showing different relationships with the other variables than the strongest factor (details are shown later). Subjects of individual sessions give higher scores on DIH, especially on the “communion” scale, reflecting the fact that a dyadic situation is based more on the cooperation of the participants than the group session.

The analysis of the pattern of correlations between PCI (the validating criteria ) and DIH, we can characterize the relationship between the subjective alteration in consciousness reported by the participants on PCI, and the way they characterized their interaction on DIH.

The positive affects reported by the participants on PCI is strongly correlated with the way the interactants characterize the interaction itself (positive DIH scales), which is true both in the case of subjects and hypnotists. In case of subjects the positive subscales of DIH are

moderately connected to the positive affect scale of PCI, but all the other PCI scales are almost independent from the DIH scores (significant but close to zero correlations). That is the phenomenological level of subjects’ (PCI) seems to be almost entirely independent from the way they evaluate the interaction itself (DIH). On the other hand in case of hypnotists, their own subjective consciousness alterations represented by PCI H (dissociative control, positive affect, internal attention) are moderately or highly connected to the way they judged their interaction with the subjects (DIH). So the various subjective aspects of felt trance state while hypnotizing seems to be more connected to the felt quality (especially intimacy) of the interaction, than the state of being hypnotized.

The application of DIH in a hypnotic sample fulfilled the aims and requirements set at the beginning of its development: this is an easily administered, quick method which can be applied for subjects and hypnotists, both in individual and group sessions.

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