Psychometric investigation of the gamification Hexad user types scale in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

Gamification has become a significant direction in designing technologies, services, products, organizational structures, and any human activities towards being more game-like and consequently being more engaging and motivating. Albeit its success, research indicates that personal differences exist with regards to susceptibility to gamification at large as well as to different types of gamification designs. As a response, models and measurement instruments of user types when it comes to gamification have been developed. One of the most discussed related instruments is the Hexad user types scale. However, there has been paucity of research related to the validity and reliability of the Hexad instrument in general but also of its different formulations and language versions. To face this gap, our study focused on analyzing the psychometric properties of the Hexad scale in Brazilian Portuguese by conducting two confirmatory factor analyses and two multi-group confirmatory factor analyses. The survey was answered by 421 Brazilian respondents (52% self-reported women, 47% self-reported men, 0.5% preferred not to provide their gender, and 0.5% checked the option “other”), from the five Brazilian regions (23 different states and the Federal District), and aged between 10 and 60 years old. Findings support the structural validity of the scale as an oblique model and indicate opportunities for small improvements. Further research, both at academy and practice, may use this study as the source of measurement of user types related to gamification (in Brazilian Portuguese), as well as, as a theoretical and practical source for further studies discussing personalized gamification.

Player profiles for game‐based applications in engineering education

“…Others indicate that females are more open to interaction and seeking feedback during gamification dynamics [15]. Finally, there are studies that relate the personality of students to the most appropriate player profile for each one according to their player profile [63].…”

“…Thus, Achievers are those who value gamification the most and Socializers are those who value it the least (Table 12). Assuming that the majority player profile of students is Achiever [63,81], it suggests the idea that the greatest similarity between engineering professors and their students regarding the choice of player profile is with professors who value gamified digital learning environments to a greater extent, although this should be verified by further comparative analysis.…”

“…When it comes to analyzing the player profiles of the agents involved in the teaching‐learning process in higher education, the literature focuses strongly on student populations. In general, without making distinctions by areas of knowledge, students are usually attributed a majority Achiever profile [81], following Bartle's classification, or Achiever followed by Philanthropist [63], according to the HEXAD model. In any case, the Achiever profile is the majority among university students.…”

Os Efeitos da Gamificação Personalizada na Experiência de Ensino e Aprendizagem Durante o Ensino Remoto Emergencial

“…Para identificar o perfil (i.e., user types) dos estudantes usamos a escala proposta por Tondello et al (2019) composta por 24 questões. Por se tratar de um estudo realizado com falantes de língua portuguesa, usamos a versão em Português-Brasileiro (Santos et al, 2022). Para evitar respostas de estudantes que não estivessem prestando a devida atenção ao responder a escala, seguindo o exemplo de estudos recentes (Orji et al, 2018;Oliveira et al, 2020;Santos et al, 2022), incluímos uma questão para checagem de atenção (i.e., "Essa é uma questão de checagem de atenção, se você leu essa questão, marque a opção 3").…”

“…Por se tratar de um estudo realizado com falantes de língua portuguesa, usamos a versão em Português-Brasileiro (Santos et al, 2022). Para evitar respostas de estudantes que não estivessem prestando a devida atenção ao responder a escala, seguindo o exemplo de estudos recentes (Orji et al, 2018;Oliveira et al, 2020;Santos et al, 2022), incluímos uma questão para checagem de atenção (i.e., "Essa é uma questão de checagem de atenção, se você leu essa questão, marque a opção 3"). Para tanto, nenhum dos alunos foi excluído do estudo, tendo em vista que todos acertaram essa questão de checagem de atenção.…”