Date of Award

1988

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Music

First Advisor

Cornelia Yarbrough

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to compare high school students' verbal opinions and behavioral intentions for musicians and their music. Subjects were high school students enrolled in a gifted and talented curriculum (N = 57) and students enrolled in the regular curriculum (N = 45). They were further categorized as students with three or more years of music training (N = 56), students with less than three years of music training (N = 46), black students (N = 39) and white students (N = 63). In part one of the study all of the subjects were given a list of 40 musicians, ten from each of the following style categories: "pop/rock/soul," "jazz/blues/big-band," "country-western," and "classical." They were instructed to choose 15 of these musicians whose music they felt important enough to be passed on to future generations (verbal opinions). In part two subjects were required to listen to 40 musical excerpts by the musicians included in part one. They responded to the music by indicating whether they would purchase the music or not, and whether they already owned it (behavioral intentions). An analysis of the frequency of classical musicians chosen in the survey and on the listening test indicated a decrease in classical musician choice from the survey to the listening test. Thus, subjects chose fewer classical musicians when listening to their music as compared to seeing their names on a list. Chi-square frequency tests indicated that the observed frequencies were statistically different from what might have been expected by chance for the gifted and talented (chi-square = 4.86, df = 1, p $<$.01), regular (chi-square = 30.6, df = 1, p $<$.02), at least three years of music (chi-square = 5.2, df = 1, p $<$.02), less than three years of music (chi-square = 21.2, df = 1, p $<$.01), black (chi-square = 10, df = 1, p $<$.01), and white subject groups (chi-square = 13.2, df = 1, p $<$.001). A comparison of the frequency of choice of all musicians on the survey and listening inventory indicated a decrease in frequency from the survey to the listening for 31 of the 40 musicians; however, a Spearman rho correlation of the ranking of the musicians indicated a moderate, positive relationship (Rs =.64, df = 40, p $<$.001) between the two measures.

Pages

102

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_disstheses.4571

Download

Share

COinS