Journal of Research in Music

Education
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The Development of a Measure of Attitude Toward Instrumental Music

Style
B. A. Chalmers
Journal of Research in Music Education 1978 26: 90
DOI: 10.2307/3344883
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90/JRME

OF
THE
DEVELOPMENT
A MEASURE
ATTITUDE
OF
INSTRUMENTAL
TOWARD
MUSIC
STYLE
B. A. Chalmers

The purpose of this study was to develop the Music Style Attitude Profile,
which is a measure of attitude toward instrumental music style. This measure
differs from other attitude tests in that it utilizes short musical excerpts
exclusively to procure immediate response toward particular instrumental
styles. Interval data on attitudes provided by the measure permits the use
of parametric procedures in analysis and hypothesis testing. The test has
been found sufficiently reliable and valid to permit the collection of data for
the purposes of standardization and the construction of a profile chart.
Key Words:audiovisual ability, attitudes, historical period, test development,
tests.
The purpose of this study was to develop a measure of attitude toward
the Baroque, Classical,Romantic, early twentieth century, and experimental music styles, and to establish its reliability, validity, and practicality. The development of the measure involved an analysis of its
capacity to discern those who like and those who dislike one or all of
the styles, the establishment of norms for a college population, and the
construction of an attitude profile for this population. The measure is
known as the Music Style Attitude Profile (MSAP).
Although measures of attitude toward music in general have been
developed by Hevner (1934), Wing (1968), and Crickmore (1969), and
music attitude scales are included among vocational interest inventories (Kuder, 1960) and Strong (1943), quantifying measures of attitude toward music are not yet available. No published standardized
This article is based on the author's doctoral dissertation, "A Measure of Attitude Toward
Music Style" (University of Kansas, 1976).

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ChaImers/91
measure of attitude toward the most recent instrumental music styles and
those of earlier Western art music is reported in the Seventh Mental Measurements Yearbook (Buros, 1972) or by the Comprehensive Dissertation Query
Service offered by Xerox.
There is no need for a quantifying device so that additional evidence of
attitudes toward music style may be collected and studied in association with
the empirical observations as can be provided by the described measures.
The MSAP is designed to provide interval data. Quantified interval data on
attitude toward instrumental music styles permits the testing of hypotheses
through the use of parametric statistical procedures. This measure possesses
the qualities of a laboratory instrument in that the stimulus object is the same
for all subjects, permitting selected variables to be closely controlled. The
test is short, the results immediate, and the seven-point measurement scale
sufficiently calibrated to indicate strength and direction of attitude. Because
of the nonverbal nature of the stimulus object (music excerpts), semantic
problems and ambiguities do not arise. The listening items are readily understood and responded to by subjects, whether or not they are musically trained
since the measure does not depend on formally learned music skills.

Descriptionof the measure

The attitude measure consists of a pencil and paper test. Subjects are
asked to indicate responses to 50 tape-recorded music stimuli on seven-point
scales. Five groups of excerpts, 10 Baroque, 10 Classical, 10 Romantic, 10
early twentieth century, and 10 experimental, were carefully selected to represent a microcosm of each style and were recorded in random order on a
reel-to-reel tape for use in the test. As each excerpt was heard, the subject
indicated response to it on a seven-point like-dislike continuum. The highest
possible score on each submeasure was 70, and the lowest possible score was
10. For the purpose of. this measure, attitude is defined as a consistently
positive or negative feeling associated with an instrumental music style. In
order to gauge the extent of positive or negative response to a particular style,
the scores on the seven-point scale for each excerpt are summed.
The attitude measure consists of 50 short music excerpts, each approximately 25 seconds in duration. Several reasons necessitate the brief excerpts.
The measure aims at procuring a subject's first reaction to each excerpt, and
a snap decision can best accomplish this. The technique is analogous to what
Cronbach (1970) described as the "flash" test, the principal value being that
its scores tend to remain stable. A subject's second thoughts, encouraged
fromlengthy excerpts, are not wanted for the purposes of this measure. Brevity
tends to focus attention on texture, timbre, instrumentation, and the idiomatic
use of rhythm, melody, and harmony, unique to each of the five styles. Brief
excerpts are less likely to draw a subject's attention to form or programatic
content, although these may be incidental factors influencing attitude.
Brevity enables more excerpts to be heard, thereby improving the test
reliability. Brief excerpts also reduce the total time required to administer

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92/JRME
the measure. This is advantageous for subjects who are not practiced in extended music listening and who tend to lose concentration due to fatigue
(Keston and Pinto, 1955), particularly among the final items of a measure.
The test-retest method was used to determine reliability. One month
intervened between administrationsof the MSAP to 20 graduate and undergraduate music and nonmusic students. The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient for the whole measure was .89, and for the submeasures
Baroque .79, Classical .77, Romantic .62, early twentieth century .85, and
experimental .91.
Variance indices showed that individual subjects rated items in each
style category consistently. A series of t-tests indicated that variance on pretest and posttest scores were not statistically significant. Also, group variance
on each style period was studied by examining the mean variation ratings of
the pilot group on each submeasure.Results indicated insignificantvariation
between pretest and posttest mean scores.To examine the internal consistency
of each submeasure, odd-even scores were summed for subjects individually
and the split-halveswere correlatedusing Pearson'sproduct-momentformula
and the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula for split-halves reliability.
This resulted in the following correlations: Baroque .95, Classical .87, Romantic .91, early twentieth century .98, and experimental .96.
An item analysis examined the effectiveness of each item in perceiving
those who possessfavorable or unfavorable attitudes toward any of the five
style periods. Single items in each style submeasurewere correlated with the
individual total score given by the subject for all 12 items on the five submeasures. The discrimination criterion was fixed at r = .40. A coefficient
less than this level was considered to have insufficient capacity to differentiate effectively between those with positive or negative attitudes toward a
style period. Two items failed to reach the criterion level and were replaced.
Effects of familiarity with excerpts on scoring were studied by giving
the MSAP to music students only, who were asked to indicate if they had
heard an excerpt before, and to name the composer and title of the composition. Thirteen excerpts were familiar to the subjects.The difference in rating
given to excerpts by subjectswho said they were familiar with them and those
who were unfamiliarwere compared using a t ratio with an unbiased estimate
of the variance, and found to be without statistical significance in every
case.
In a second pilot study the MSAP was administeredto 11 music students.
The totaled raw scoresof each subject on the five submeasureswere arranged
in rank order to indicate the relative strength of attitude toward each music
style. A series of additional measuresof attitude was then administeredto the
second pilot group using the method of paired comparisons (Hays, 1967),
a self-report, a pretest-posttest,a record collection survey, and a videotape
observation analysis. Rank-orderedattitudes resulting from these procedures
were compared with the rank order resulting from the MSAP to test its
validity. On the basis of this comparison it appearsthat the MSAP is a valid
instrument for measuring the psychological attitude toward selected music
styles.

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Chalmers/93
Profile and standardization
A profile form was designed for the MSAP and norms established for
college students. The 106 subjects comprising the norm group were students
from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the School of Education, and
the School of Fine Arts at the University of Kansas. They were administered
the MSAP and their scores were used to determine norms on the attitude
measure for the general college student population of the university.
Percentiles were calculated on the basis of data returned and P9g, Po0,
P75, P25,P10,and P2 points fixed for each of the Baroque, Classical, Romantic,
early twentieth century, and experimental music subscales.
Raw
Score

70

Baroque

Classical

Romantic

Early
Twentieth
Century Experimental

3.

70

98
60

135

10

10

1:>
Figure 1
Profile Chart for MSAP

Norms for college students at the University of Kansas shown in shaded areas

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_60

94/JRME
The raw score continuum on the left and right of the chart (see Figure 1)
enables the subject's total score in each style measure to be placed in its appropriate position on the profile. Taken in conjunction with the norms, the
raw score provides a means of comparing an individual subject's attitude
toward the five instrumental music styles with those of the college population as a whole. In addition, the profile furnishes a visual indication of the
strength and direction of a subject's attitude toward the styles measured.
The norms for college students established by the study showed the extent to which their attitudes differed toward Baroque, Classical, Romantic,
early twentieth century, and experimental music styles. The positions of the
50th percentile in the norms for Baroque, Classical, and Romantic music are
61, 58, and 60, respectively, on the raw score continuum, the locations of
which correspond to the sixth point on the seven-point scale. Using the
verbal labels attached to the seven-point scale, the norms indicate that college students generally have a moderate liking for these three instrumental
styles. The 50th percentile for the twentieth century norms falls at a position that corresponds to the neutral midpoint on the seven-point scale, suggesting that college students as a whole neither like nor dislike this style of
instrumental music. The location at which the 50th percentile falls for
experimental music is midway between the second and third points on the
seven-point scale, indicating that the average college student has a moderate
to mild dislike of this music style.
To illustrate how the profile demonstrates the extent to which college students' attitudes differ towards each instrumental music style, the scores of
S99 were demonstrated on an MSAP chart: 52 Baroque, 56 Classical, 67
Romantic, 40 early twentieth century, and 23 experimental music. This
profile is presented in Figure 1.
It can be seen by reference to the shaded areas that the attitude toward
Baroque music, positioned between the 10th and 25th percentiles, was less
favorable than most general college students. Attitude toward Classical
music was about average, whereas that toward Romantic was much more
favorable than most, the score appearing well above the 75th percentile.
Attitude toward early twentieth century music was on par with most others
in the norm group and attitude toward experimental music was slightly less
favorable than that of the average general college student.

Discussion
The MSAP is designed to measure attitudes toward five separate instrumental music styles. The submeasures are, however, independent of each
other. The MSAP is not intended to be used as a battery of tests to gather
data on attitudes toward instrumental music in general, nor is it designed
to show relationships among attitudes toward the five styles. Although the
measure may show that a subject possesses extreme liking for the Baroque

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Chalmers/95
style, inferences regarding attitude toward other styles cannot be drawn on
the basis of this data alone.
It was noted when classifying data from pilot studies, that music majors
and general college students tended to use the continuum differently. General
college students made frequent use of extreme points on the scale, regularly
circling one and seven. Music students were inclined to be more conservative,
generally ranking excerpts between six and two. The reasons for this need to
be investigated. It may be an inevitable result of the numbered continuum
that perhaps directs subjects' scores to certain points. An unmarked continuum may encourage more flexible scoring, allowing subjects to mark where
they wish. Distance from a zero point could then be measured resulting in
interval data as legitimately as a seven-point scale. Comparison of both
types of continua could provide important information for improvement of
the MSAP.
Although item analysis indicates that the MSAP is not effective as a
measure of attitude toward music in general, further validation of the test
could be attempted by correlating the mean MSAP scores totaled over the
five submeasures with scores on the Hevner Test of Attitude Toward Music
(1934) and Long's revision of the Oregon Musical Discrimination Tests
(1965). Correlation of mean MSAP scores with mean scores on psychological
tests such as the Strong Vocational Interest Blank for Men and Women (1943)
musician's scale, and the Kuder Preference Record (1960) might reveal significant relationships between psychological characteristics and attitude
toward music. Furthermore, correlation between scores on submeasures of
the MSAP and psychological measures of personality such as the Minnesota
Multiphasic Personality Inventory could disclose associations between attitude toward particular music styles and selected personality factors.
The measure was designed primarily to objectify attitudes and to transform these into usable numerical data. Attitudinal norms have already been
established for one large college group. Work in this direction will be continued to expand norms so that they can apply to a majority of college students. Further administration of the measure will serve to establish norms
for other populations such as high school students, college music majors,
and so on. Currently the MSAP is being administered in five universities
throughout Australia to establish norms for an Australian university population and for the populations within the universities themselves.
The differences in attitudes toward Baroque, Classical, Romantic, early
twentieth century, and experimental music between culturally advantaged
and disadvantaged groups can also be measured through the use of the
MSAP. Its use in hypothesis testing is apparent in such circumstances.
Since the initial motivation for the development of the MSAP originated
from a concern for the low level of interest in contemporary experimental
music styles exhibited by the concert-going public, the measure will be utilized
in a series of longitudinal studies among selected community groups in order
to detect and investigate changes in attitudes toward the most recent developments in instrumental music.

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96/JRME
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Deakin University
Victoria, Australia

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