How do we present ourselves online? Validation of the Presentation of Online Self Scale

The Internet offers featuressuch as anonymity, opport Unities forasynchronous interaction and greatercontrol over what individuals shareabout themselves. These features aresuggested to promote optimal self-presentation (Walther & Parks, 2002).Individuals with certain characteristics(e.g. introverts) are also more likely toexperiment with self-presentation online,perhaps because of perceived limitationsin their offline interactions or becausethey are especially motivated to garnerdesirable impressions (Fullwood, 2015).However, there is yet an instrumentavailable that measures and identifiesdifferent types of self-presentationbehaviour in cyberspace. This studyaims to validate a questionnaire, thePresentation of Online Self Scale (POSS)that measures an individual’s propensityto experiment with self-presentationonline. The scale has been piloted onadolescents (Fullwood, James andChen-Wilson, 2016). To examine POSS’sreliability, adults in four English-speakingcounties (Australia, UK, Ireland and theUS) are being recruited to completethe questionnaire. Factor analysis willbe conducted to see if the four factorspreviously identified in adolescents arestill valid: ideal self, multiple selves,consistent self, and online presentationpreference. Data from the followingquestionnaires are being collected toexamine the POSS’s construct validity:Self Monitoring Scale (Snyder, 1974),Facebook Intensity (Ellison et al., 2007),Social desirability scale (Crowne andMarlowe, 1960), Social anxiety scale(Leary, 1983) and the Self-conceptclarity Scale (Campbell et al, 1996). Thedata collection is on going with a currentsample size of over 100 participantsfrom the UK and Ireland. This paper willpresent the preliminary results from thefinal sample