Development and psychometric validation of the music receptivity scale

Abstract

Introduction One of the most quoted definitions of Yoga is ‘yujyate anena iti yogaù’. Here, ‘Yuj’ in Sanskrit means ‘to Yoke’ or to unite. Here it refers to the union of the jévätmä (individual soul) with the paramätmä (the supreme soul). Music in it true sense is said to be the union of shruti and laya. The perfect union of shruti and laya renders the listeners in a meditative trance provided they submit themselves to the music. Flow experiences (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) are quite common in music practice, performances and composition. The novel construct introduced in this study focuses on an individual’s experience listening to a given piece of music; the focus is on how he internalizes a given piece of music. ‘Flow’ experiences may occur quite often when an individual internalizes a given piece of music to a great extent. In this study, we proposed and developed a construct, Music Receptivity and further constructed a psychometric instrument called Music Receptivity Scale (MRS), field-tested it and data analysis revealed good psychometric properties. Literature review Ancient scriptures were reviewed which unraveled various aspects of music and how music could be used as a tool for personal and spiritual upliftment. Further, scientific literature review revealed multiple studies that focused on musical engagement, musical aptitude etc. Multiple psychometric instruments are available which measures the trait aspects predominantly, of music listening and engagement. Hence, we clearly saw a lacunae for state measuring instruments in music listening. However, these studies gave us rich inputs while developing the Music Receptivity Scale (MRS). Aim To develop an instrument to measure music receptivity in the context of Indian music. Objectives 1. To construct an instrument to measure music receptivity by item generation and validation. iii 2. To test and validate the instrument amongst different individuals in the context of Indian music. 3. To find out the validity of the developed instrument (in a bhajan setup) amongst yoga population. Methods Participants For phase 1 of the study, with the aim of generating items for the instrument, we approached music experts from the department of music, University of Kerala and also Sree Swathi Tirunal College of Music, Trivandrum, for in-depth unstructured interviews. Data redundancy was reached by the 7th interview. Further we approached another 7 experts from the field of music for a Focus Group Discussion, from above-mentioned two colleges. For phase 2, we approached two colleges, one was Marian Engineering College, Trivandrum and the other was Immanuel College, Vazhichal. We conducted the pilot study with 63 individuals from Marian Engineering College and field-testing of the tool with 212 individuals from the same college. Additionally we conducted field-testing with 101 individuals from Immanuel College, Vazhichal. Further, we field-tested the tool with 44 musicians from the Department of Music, University of Kerala. In order to validate the MRS among the Yoga population, we selected 72 Yoga students (male -28, female – 44) from S-VYASA Yoga University, Bengaluru. Mean age among male students were 26 and that among female students were 25. Design The research design was a mixed design, employing both qualitative and quantitative methods. Phase 1 was qualitative study and phase 2 was quantitative study employing survey method. The Music Receptivity Scale (MRS) was also validated amongst a Yoga population. Assessment tools For the qualitative phase: In-depth interview guide (Probe questions) iv Focus group discussion guide For the quantitative phase: Music Receptivity Scale (MRS) Marlowe Crowne Social Desirability Scale (SDS) d2 test of attention Interest In Music (IIM) Scale Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS-SF) Mind Wandering Scale (MWS) Data extraction and analysis Three sets of data, pilot (n=63), general population (n=313), musicians (n=44) were separately analyzed. The final sample size used to report the results is 313, which is in the ratio of 13 cases per item, more than the recommended 10 cases per item. All the analyses were done using R statistical software, version 3.4.2 (R Development Core Team, 2020) and its packages psych (Revelle, 2019). To refine the construct of music receptivity, and to get inputs for item generation, we conducted unstructured in-depth interviews and focus group discussion. Items were generated based on the inputs obtained from the in-depth interviews and the FGD. The consolidated questionnaire had 23 items designed to capture the domains of attention, interest, lyrical appraisal, emotional experience and hurdles. As the aim of this study was to evaluate the structure of music receptivity scale (MRS), we used exploratory factor analysis to determine the number and nature of underlying factors of MRS. We used parallel analysis to determine the number of factors to retain (Horn, 1965); principal axis factoring was performed to evaluate the number of underlying factors by employing oblique rotation (oblimin) as the domains were anticipated to be correlated. Maximum iterations for convergence were fixed at 1000. The analyses revealed more than one solution. v Results Data analysis yielded two solutions – a two factor solution (Affect and Attention) and a four factor solution (Emotion, interest, attention and hurdles). Validation amongst Yoga population yielded mixed results for convergent and divergent validity. Discussion We intended to develop an instrument to measure music receptivity, field test it and assess its psychometric properties and as a culmination of which, we developed a 20- item questionnaire having four domains (emotional experience, interest, attention, hurdles) and a shorter 12-item version of the same. The two-factor solution was a reduced item version, and it yielded the two most important meta-components of music receptivity, i.e., affect and attention. The affect domain included interest and emotional experience, whereas attention remained as a separate factor. We could also observe discriminant validity between musicians and non-musicians, where the musicians had significantly higher music receptivity scores compared to non musicians. Conclusion The Music Receptivity Scale was developed and it has a 20 item long form and a 12 item short form. As this tool was primarily intended for music therapy purposes, this tool needs to be field tested in music therapy settings. Further, the mode of application of this tool could be via a mobile application for the ease of use.