Construction of a homesickness questionnaire using a female population with two types of self-reported homesickness. Preliminary results

This study describes further steps in the construction of a questionnaire to assess the vulnerability to develop homesickness using a female population suffering from either chronic feelings of homesickness (CHS) or episodic attacks of homesickness occurring during holidays and stay overs only (EHS) and a healthy control group (HC). The results show a striking correspondence to those found among homesick male military conscripts. The factors Assertiveness, Rigidity, (Earlier) Homesickness Experiences and Extraversion appear among women as well: women suffering from homesickness are likewise less assertive, less extraverted, more rigid and report more (earlier) homesickness experiences than female controls. In contrast, the factor dominance does not seem to play a role among homesick women. Results suggest that the factors extraversion, rigidity, assertiveness and (earlier) homesickness experiences are important markers of the vulnerability to develop homesickness across different populations and across different operationalizations of homesickness. Although CHS subjects and EHS subjects did not differ from each other with respect to personality variables, the EHS subjects showed significantly higher scores on the subscale (earlier) Homesickness Experiences. Furthermore, results of the Discriminant Analyses suggest that the present version of the Homesickness Questionnaire (HQ) is somewhat more sensitive in detecting the latent tendency to develop homesickness than the manifest symptoms of homesickness. Since almost similar subscales emerged with a comparable discriminating power, it is concluded that the 29-item questionnaire, constructed on the basis of the study among males, might as yet be considered as the most adequate preliminary version of the HQ.