Using Presence Questionnaires in Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) is gaining increasing importance in science, education, and entertainment. A fundamental characteristic of VR is creating presence, the experience of 'being' or 'acting', when physically situated in another place. Measuring presence is vital for VR research and development. It is typically repeatedly assessed through questionnaires completed after leaving a VR scene. Requiring participants to leave and re-enter the VR costs time and can cause disorientation. In this paper, we investigate the effect of completing presence questionnaires directly in VR. Thirty-six participants experienced two immersion levels and filled three standardized presence questionnaires in the real world or VR. We found no effect on the questionnaires' mean scores; however, we found that the variance of those measures significantly depends on the realism of the virtual scene and if the subjects had left the VR. The results indicate that, besides reducing a study's duration and reducing disorientation, completing questionnaires in VR does not change the measured presence but can increase the consistency of the variance.