Construction of a Validated Virtual Embodiment Questionnaire
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User embodiment is important for many Virtual Reality (VR) applications, for example, in the context of social interaction, therapy, training, or entertainment. Yet, there is no commonly agreed-on or validated way to empirically measure the perception of embodiment necessary to evaluate this important quality of user experience (UX). We present a virtual embodiment questionnaire (VEQ) to assess components of virtual embodiment in a valid, reliable, and consistent fashion. We reviewed previous literature to identify applicable concepts and items and performed a confirmatory factor analysis on the data of three experiments (N = 196). Each experiment modified a distinct simulation property, namely the level of immersion, the level of personalization, and the level of behavioral realism. The analysis confirmed three factors: (1) the ownership of a virtual body, (2) the agency over a virtual body, and (3) the change in the perceived body schema. A fourth study (N = 22) further confirmed the reliability and validity of the scale and investigated the impacts of latency jitter of avatar movements presented in the simulation compared to linear latencies and a baseline. We present the final scale and further insights from the studies regarding related constructs.
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