Construction and test of an empirical measure for narrative coherence and fidelity

The Narrative Coherence and Fidelity Measure was constructed based on Walter Fisher's theory of narration. The final version had satisfactory inter‐item Cronbach alpha reliabilities for both Coherence (.77) and Fidelity (.82). Coherence and Fidelity scores predicted variance in the persuasiveness of oral and written narratives. The first version of the Narrative Coherence and Fidelity Measure accounted for 14 percent of the variance in the persuasiveness of 25 oral stories, and the second version accounted for 42 percent of the variance in the persuasiveness of two short written stories.