A criterion-related validity test of selected indicators of musical sophistication using expert ratings
Year: 2006
Type: article
Abstract: Music researchers have regularly employed simple measures, such as years of private lessons taken, as indicators of participants’ musical sophistication levels. The aim of this study was to test 29 self-administrable indicators of musical sophistication in order to determine their ability to explain the variance in experts’ subjective ratings—used as the criterion variable. Furthermore, a model was developed and tested to classify participants as being more or less musically sophisticated. The author developed a 36-item questionnaire and administered it to a sample of 633 adult volunteers who belonged to various music-related groups (e.g., music courses, performing ensembles). Group leaders provided sophistication ratings of the respondents. Bivariate correlations revealed that the indicator most strongly associated with the experts’ ratings (r = .54) asked respondents to select one of six self-descriptive titles (nonmusician through professional); the popular indicator, years of private lessons, ranked tenth (r = .40). The results of the logistic regression analysis indicated an overall significant model (chisquare < .001) with 7 of the 29 indicators significant at the .05 level. The model is able to accurately classify respondents as more or less musically sophisticated approximately 82% of the time.
Author: Joy E Ollen
Institution: The Ohio State University
Language: English
Subfield: Music
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2134481098