Affective touch in the South African context: validation and perspectives of the touch experiences and attitudes questionnaire

Abstract

Touch is an essential part of human development. Recently, the motivational and emotional dimensions of tactile experience – affective touch – have been considered as fundamental to the construction of the bodily self. However, until recently, there was no formal assessment on the attitudes and experiences of affective touch over the life-course. The aim of this study was twofold. First, to validate the 57-item UK-Touch Experiences and Attitudes Questionnaire (UK-TEAQ) within the South African context. The secondary aim was to investigate differences in how individuals perceive, understand and interpret affective type touch, based on socio-demographic factors, such as gender, race, religion, relationship status and age. This research study can be described as a non-experimental, quantitative, cross sectional and correlational study. The sample was collected through non-probability, convenience sampling method, as well as snowball sampling method. Of the analyses conducted the following results were found: (1) females perceive the sense of touch more pleasant as compared to male participants; (2) significant differences were found in the perception of touch between individuals with different relationship statuses; (3) different racial groups perceived the sense of touch differently, with the main differences being between White and Black racial groups; (4) small but significant differences were found between different religious groups and age groups and how they perceive touch; (5) a multiple regression analysis revealed that most socio-demographic factors were significantly good predictors of impacting affective type touch. This study has found that, how we interpret, perceive and understand the sense of touch, specifically affective touch, is impacted by various socio-demographic factors.