Humor and Aging:
Humor Differences between Caregivers of the Aging
Introducing Humor into the Nursing Home
Not All Caregivers Laugh Alike!
When attendees at the 2009 Minnesota Aging Services Institute humor session took the Humor Quotient Test, they provided a great deal of valuable information about the humor preferences of elder-care providers, for which ITCHS is very grateful. Analysis has revealed an overall staff humor profile of Consoler. At the same time analysis elucidated differences in humor preference among various leadership cadres of the elder-care providers.
To clarify these differences, ITCHS selected 65 respondents from five professional areas. Respondents included 15 each of Social Workers, Home Nurses, Resident-care Nurses, and Activities/Rec and five Pastors. These 65 respondents had all completed four years of college or more.
Ranking the joke preferences of each group revealed that different professional groups of aging services providers had different humor preferences.
At 95% confidence or better, the results indicate:
· Social Workers have a higher preference than the other groups for Gotcha;
· Social Workers have a lower preference than the other groups for Sympathetic Pain;
· Activities/Rec personnel have a lower preference than the other groups for
Incongruity;
· Home Nurses have a higher preference than the other groups for Incongruity;
· Home Nurses have a lower preference than the other groups for Gotcha.
Probably because there were only five Pastors, none of their results were high-confidence. They scored highest in Gotcha and lowest in Incongruity.
These results make sense to us from our own theoretical perspective. We would be happy, however, for others’ ideas why any of these results are as they are. Please send any such feed back to pgrawe@hbci.com.
For a more in-depth discussion of conference participants humor preferences, see Humor Quotient Newsletter 11.2 and Humor Quotient Newsletter 11.3.