Investigation of the relationship between academicians' humor styles and communication skills

The main purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between academicians' humor styles and communication skills. The relationship between humor styles and communication skills of academicians working at Kastamonu University was examined. In the study, descriptive research was conducted using the relational screening model. A total of 304 academicians participated in the study. Data were collected using a questionnaire consisting of a Personal Information Form, the Humor Behavior Scale, and the Communication Skills Scale. SPSS version 23.0 was used for data analysis. According to the skewness and kurtosis values in the normality analysis test, the distribution was found to be normal. To analyze the sub-problems, mean (X̅), frequency (f), standard deviation (S.s.), percentage (%), T-test for independent sample groups, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (r), and regression analysis were performed. The significance level was set at p<.05 for all analysis results. As a result of the research; it was seen that academicians adopted the sarcastic humor style at the highest level and the productive-social humor style at the lowest level. While it is seen that the humor styles of academicians differ according to gender, title, age, professional seniority and tenure, they do not differ according to the level of education. It is seen that academicians' communication skills differ according to gender, title, age, professional seniority and tenure, but not according to level of education. According to the correlation results to examine the relationship between academicians' humor styles and communication skills, there is a positive low-level relationship between non-humorous, rejecting and productive-social style, which are sub-dimensions of humor styles, and communication skills, and a positive medium-level relationship between sarcastic style, which is a sub-dimension of humor styles, and communication skills. According to the regression analysis, the order of importance of the predictor variables on humor styles are "Emotional", "Cognitive" and "Behavioral" variables. When the t-test results regarding the significance levels of the predictors are analyzed, it is seen that only "Emotional" variable is a significant predictor. However, "Behavioral" and "Cognitive" variables are not significant predictors.