The Chinese version of the Gold-MSI: Adaptation and validation of an inventory for the measurement of musical sophistication in a Taiwanese sample

Abstract

This study presents the Chinese adaptation of the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI), an instrument for measuring individual differences in musical ability and skilled musical behaviour. Its psychometric properties were examined with a Taiwanese sample. The Gold-MSI inventory was translated into Chinese following recommendations from the literature on cross-cultural test development. Subsequently, the psychometric properties of the Chinese Gold-MSI self-report inventory, including the Melody Memory Task and the Beat Alignment Perception Task, were evaluated using an online survey with 1,065 participants. Results of confirmatory factor analysis suggest that the original factor structure of the Gold-MSI inventory showed an acceptable fit with the data from the Chinese-speaking sample. In addition, the Chinese Gold-MSI inventory shows good reliability. The Melody Memory Task and the Beat Alignment Perception Task also have sufficient test-retest reliability. Finally, correlations between the Chinese Gold-MSI inventory and the Musical-Rhythmic Intelligence subscale of the Eight Multiple Intelligences Questionnaire as well as the two additional music tests provide evidence for convergent and divergent validity. Overall, the data suggest that the Chinese Gold-MSI has good psychometric properties. Percentile norms for the Gold-MSI inventory and the music tests from the present sample are reported for use in future studies. The present study thus makes a valuable contribution to cross-cultural research in music psychology by enabling the comparison between Chinese and Western studies of individual differences in musical ability.

Learning melodic musical intervals: To block or to interleave?

“…We administered the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI; version 1.0) to assess participants' musical sophistication as a potential predictor of their inductive learning performance. A 38-item self-report inventory, the Gold-MSI measures musical sophistication on several dimensions of musical skills and behaviors in the general population (Müllensiefen, Gingras, Musil, & Stewart, 2014), and has been validated across several studies (Baker, Ventura, Calamia, Shanahan, & Elliott, 2018;Degrave & Dedonder, 2019;Lima, Correia, Müllensiefen, & Castro, 2020;Lin, Kopiez, Müllensiefen, & Wolf, 2019). The Gold-MSI includes five subscales: active musical engagement (9 items; α = .80), perceptual abilities (9 items; α = .80), musical training (7 items; α = .77), emotional responses to music (6 items; α = .62), and singing abilities (7 items; α = .83).…”

The German Music@Home: Validation of a questionnaire measuring at home musical exposure and interaction of young children

“…We translated the Music@Home questionnaires (Infant and Preschool version) following recommendations from the literature and used the same procedure established by previous scientific questionnaire translation studies [27,30,39,40]. First the English questionnaires were translated into German from three independent persons who were all fluent in German and English.…”

“…23, [24][25][26]. Moreover, several translations of musical background questionnaires have been published [27][28][29][30], which enables international comparisons of research results.…”

Examining musical sophistication: A replication and theoretical commentary on the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index

“…Developed in a multi-step process, as detailed in Müllensiefen et al (2014), the test is composed of a self-report questionnaire inventory with five sub-scales, two objective listening tests (a melodic memory task and beat perception task), as well as a sound similarity sorting exercise. The test has also been translated into other languages including German (Schaal, Bauer, & Müllensiefen, 2014) and Chinese (Lin, Kopiez, Müllensiefen, & Wolf, 2018). Recently the test has been modified and adapted using more sophisticated statistical modeling, resulting in shorter versions of the test, which reportedly have the same construct validity as the original (Harrison, Collins, & Müllensiefen, 2017).…”