PURPOSE
This study was performed to identify the relationship between Sense of Humor, Coping Humor, Perceived stress and self-esteem in the middle-aged women. METHODS: Data were collected from the 20th of June to the 30th of August in 2009 from 145 middle-aged women living in Seoul. Data analysis was done with SPSS/WIN 12.0 program for descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation. RESULTS: The mean score of the humor sense was 55.94+/-6.52, coping humor was 21.11+/-3.82, perceived stress was 22.21+/-3.03 and self-esteem was 27.50+/-2.88. Subcategories of sense of humor were that emotional expressiveness was average 20.75+/-2.70, meta-message sensitivity was average 20.12+/-2.74 and liking of humor was average 15.13+/-3.44. Sense of humor was difference according to the economic status(t=2.000, p=.047), coping humor was difference according to the on medication use(t=2.227, p=.027). There was a significant correlation between the coping humor, perceived stress and the self-esteem. When the coping humor was higher, perceived stress was lower and the self-esteem was higher. CONCLUSION: This study showed that medication and economic status influences the humor scores and the sense of humor and coping humor were related to perceived stress and self-esteem in middle-aged women Therefore, these findings can provide the basis for the development of nursing intervention to increase the ability to coping with stress.

PURPOSE
This study is a descriptive research study to develop the Nurse's Humor Questionnaire, and then analyze humor's appreciation and use by Korean nurses. METHOD: The three stages used to develop the questionnaire were to make a conceptual framework, make an open questionnaire through the 2nd preliminary inquiry, and make a structured questionnaire based on collected statements through the developed open questionnaire. The subjects that carried out completely a structured questionnaire were 337 nurses. RESULT: 1) The final developed questionnaire consists of 6 domains and 67 items. The reliability of 'When feeling humor's expression'( =0.7079), 'The barrier factors of humor's use'( =0.7895), and 'Humor's values'( =0.8336) was high. 2) The results related to Humor's values of nurses that showed significant differences were as follow: (1) age, marital status, and current position (2)a negative correlation between stress and humor's values (3) humor's sources: daily life and conversation (4) frequency of used humor (5) types of used humor: word humor, imitation, adequate situation and technical terms, and (6) when using humor's expression: tense atmosphere, awkward atmosphere and adequate situation. CONCLUSION: The developed tool can be used for understanding nurse's humor. This will help to develop the humor program as a nursing intervention for health promotion.