Measuring Narrative Transportation: Comparing the Validity of the Transportation Scale in Relation to Written Versus Audio-Visual Narratives

Many scholars investigating narrative persuasion make use of Greene and Brock’s (2000) transportation scale to measure the degree to which audiences get carried away into a narrative. However, it was originally designed for written narratives, while many studies now use it for audio-visual stimuli, in some cases dropping items, in others rewording or replacing them. In this study, we exposed 125 participants to either a written or film version of the same narrative. A confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the scale was not uni-dimensional, and follow-up questions showed that significant numbers of participants who viewed the film version were puzzled by items that asked about their ability to imagine what they had seen. When the data were separated by medium, the written version of the scale reduced to a single factor, but the film version contained four factors. The relationships between these subscales and enjoyment and appreciation are discussed. Further research into how transportation might vary across media is encouraged.