Answering With Bow and Arrow: Questionnaires and VR Blend Without Distorting the Outcome

Psychological factors to be assessed by questionnaires, such as presence, may be influenced by variables like a break in presence induced by transitioning between physical and virtual reality - or time elapsed between the actual sensation and its measurement when questionnaires are used. Moreover, participants of previous experiments stated discomfort due to changing repeatedly between VR and non-VR. These aspects motivate the investigation of new ways of administering questionnaires in VR research. Previous attempts to integrate questionnaires into VR as world- or user-anchored canvases still lead to a clear separation between interaction for task and data acquisition in the virtual environment, which has been shown as problematic due to interruption of experience. Therefore, this work goes one step further by integrating the answering of the questionnaire into the actual task using the same interaction technique and metaphor. We implemented a bow and arrow game in which the player had to shoot at randomly spawning targets as fast and accurate as possible. Subsequently, the player had to answer each item of a questionnaire by actually shooting at a target that represented the rating with the same type of interaction method. No difference in presence (SUS-PQ), satisfaction (ASQ) or workload (SMEQ) ratings was found between questionnaires presented either embedded in VR (as described above), as text panel in VR or as desktop PC version. In conclusion, the embedded questionnaires may render less negative effects of transitioning between VR and non-VR without impairing the questionnaire results.