Preliminary Study On The Undergraduates' Flow Experiences During The Computer Games: Questionnaire And Actuality

As the computer has become more and more popular on campus and computer games have become very important recreational activities among the undergraduates, researches on the flow experiences during the computer games is becoming very hot in psychology. Based on literature review, we defined flow as the psychological experience which was happening during the totally devoting to any computer game in this paper. Since the individual entirely immersed in the ongoing games, his (or her) behavior and conscious will be fully integrated with each other, and he (or she) will be not sensible to the irrelevant surroundings. It seems that the real word has been far away from him (or her) and instead the gamer has been immersed in a virtual world in touch, along which he (or she) will experience a potential sense of control, distorted sense of time and enjoyable feelings. Flow is a multi-dimensional psychological construct.According to the operational definition, the results of open-ended investigation, the theoretical hypothesis, we constructed the preliminary questionnaire of the undergraduates'flow experiences during the computer games, which was formed into the formal questionnaire according to date analysis on 207 undergraduates'questionnaires data. The formal questionnaire composed of 19 items is constructed with 5 dimensions:a sense of control, telepresence, distorted sense of time, unconscious to irrelevant surroundings and enjoyable feelings.543 undergraduates from the Southwest University, Luoyang Normal University, North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power, Anhui University of Finance and Economics and Sichuan International Studies University were tested with the formal questionnaire, and 36 of them were retested after three weeks. According it, the consistency reliability, retested reliability and construct-related validity were tested out, and we explored the characteristic of undergraduates'flow experience during the computer games. Besides, we tested the relationship between flow experiences, attribution style and computer game addiction.Combining with all the study results, the main findings of the research are as follows:1. Flow experience during the computer games is a multi-dimensional psychological construct which is constructed with a sense of control, telepresence, distorted sense of time, unconscious to irrelevant surroundings and enjoyable feelings.2. The self-made questionnaire has high reliability and validity, and could be the tool for measuring the undergraduates'flow experience during the computer games.3. The scores between male and female subjects, and between subjects from different grades have significant differences in the various dimensions and total score, except in "distorted sense of time"; but the scores of undergraduates from urban and rural areas have significant differences only in "a sense of control"; and the scores of undergraduates from different majors have significant differences only in "distorted sense of time"; and during the regular game types, the scores of high and low groups have significant differences between on-line games and the QQ games.4. There is consistent correlation between flow and attribution style or computer game addiction, and according to the regression equation, telepresence, time distortion, sense of control, unconscious to irrelevant surroundings and the total score all can predict computer game addiction more or less.