Development of the nonverbal immediacy scale (NIS): Measures of self‐and other‐perceived nonverbal immediacy

TLDR

Nonverbal immediacy has attracted attention in instructional, interpersonal, and organizational communication, yet existing measurement instruments often suffer from low reliability. This study aimed to address these reliability issues or, if unresolved, to identify their underlying causes. The resulting self‑ and other‑report scale demonstrated high reliability across all contexts, strong content validity, a high predictive validity correlation, and revealed unexpected sex differences.

Abstract

In recent years nonverbal immediacy has received considerable attention from researchers concerned with instructional communication, interpersonal communication, and organizational communication. Unfortunately, the instruments used to measure nonverbal immediacy in these contexts sometimes have been problematic in terms of their reliability estimates. This research attempted to overcome this problem, or failing that, to identify the cause(s) of the reduced reliability. The research resulted in a scale with high reliability when used as either a self‐report or an other‐report measure. It was also found to be equally reliable across the contexts of instructional, interpersonal, and organizational communication. Content validity of the scale is good and an initial test of predictive validity produced a high validity correlation. Unexpected sex differences were observed in the results and these are discussed in this report.