Tag Archives: IEQ

Are you interested in studying the psychology of gaming or immersive experiences? The Immersive Experience Questionnaire (IEQ) is an essential tool that can help you measure immersion—the psychological experience of being deeply engaged in a task, such as playing a video game. Whether you’re investigating what makes games so captivating or analyzing the factors that influence immersion, the IEQ provides a structured, validated approach to quantify this fascinating phenomenon.

What Is the IEQ?

The Immersive Experience Questionnaire (IEQ) is a tool designed to measure the degree of immersion an individual experiences during a particular activity, such as playing a game or using a virtual reality system. Immersion is assessed across five dimensions:

1. Cognitive Involvement: The mental effort and focus dedicated to the activity.
2. Real-World Dissociation: The extent to which an individual loses awareness of their surroundings.
3. Challenge: How well the difficulty of the task matches the individual’s skills.
4. Emotional Involvement: The level of emotional engagement with the activity.
5. Control: How much autonomy and ease the individual feels during the activity.

The IEQ uses a combination of Likert-scale questions to measure these dimensions, offering a detailed picture of how immersive an experience was.

Resources to Get Started

To help you score and interpret the IEQ, we’ve prepared two resources:

1. IEQ Scoring Guide: A document that explains how to calculate scores for each dimension of the IEQ.
2. IEQ Scoring Spreadsheet: A pre-formatted spreadsheet where you can input participants’ responses and automatically calculate their scores.

These resources will save you time and ensure that your analysis is accurate and consistent.

How to Use the IEQ

1. Administer the Questionnaire: Give the IEQ to participants after they have completed the immersive activity you’re studying. Ensure they understand the questions and the context in which they should respond.
2. Collect Data: Make your own copy of the spreadsheet. Gather responses and enter them into the IEQ Scoring Spreadsheet.
3. Score the Responses: Use the guide and spreadsheet to calculate scores for each dimension as well as an overall immersion score.
4. Interpret the Results: Compare scores across participants or experimental conditions to uncover patterns or insights about immersion.

Jennett, C., Cox, A. L., Cairns, P., Dhoparee, S., Epps, A., Tijs, T., & Walton, A. (2008). Measuring and defining the experience of immersion in games. International journal of human-computer studies, 66(9), 641-661.