Performance anxiety in adolescent musicians

Abstract

Ninety secondary school music students (49 females, 41 males aged 12–18 years) from four Adelaide metropolitan schools with selective music programmes completed the Music Performance Anxiety Inventory for Adolescents (MPAI-A), State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised Short Form, and Adolescent Coping Scale Short Form. Females reported significantly more music performance anxiety (MPA) than males. Trait anxiety and neuroticism were significantly positively correlated with MPA and extraversion was significantly negatively correlated with MPA. Unproductive coping strategies were significantly positively correlated with MPA, but no significant association was found between MPA and productive coping strategies. Hierarchical regression analysis found that, after controlling for intercorrelations among variables, trait anxiety was the strongest significant predictor of MPA. Correlations between MPA with neuroticism and with extraversion were significantly accounted for by trait anxiety. The MPAI-A may hold promise as a screening tool for the early identification of potential MPA.

Keywords

coping Music Performance Anxiety Inventory for Adolescents personality sex differences trait anxiety

Performance anxiety affects individuals in a variety of circumstances, including but not limited to test taking, public speaking and sports as well as the performing arts disciplines of dance, acting and music (Kenny, 2005). Music performance anxiety (MPA) is a relatively new research field (Taborsky, 2007), mainly focussing on adults, particularly professional and amateur musicians and university music students (Kenny & Osborne, 2006).

How to define MPA is currently under debate and Kenny (2010) has provided a comprehensive, critical review of the issues. Our definition is taken from Kenny (2010, p. 433): MPA is ‘persistent anxious apprehension related to musical performance’ that does not necessarily impair performance and may be unrelated to actual musical accomplishments, but it can be enduring, and experienced in different music performance settings.

Similar debate has been raised regarding how to measure MPA. Osborne and Kenny (2005) reviewed existing inventories in the English language literature, pointing to significant theoretical and psychometric shortcomings as well as restricted range because all were designed for use with adults. In response, Osborne and Kenny developed the Music Performance Anxiety Inventory for Adolescents (MPAI-A) to assess the somatic, cognitive, and behavioural components of MPA among adolescents.

Initially, research focussed predominantly on reported high levels of MPA and treatment strategies, specifically the effects of pharmaceuticals (e.g., Clark & Agras, 1991) and psychological treatments (e.g., Sweeney & Horan, 1982). The prevalence of self-reported MPA among professional musicians has ranged from 16% (Fishbein, Middlestadt, Ottati, Straus, & Ellis, 1988) to over 30% (Marchant-Haycox & Wilson, 1992; Steptoe & Fidler, 1987; van Kemenade, van Son, & van Heesch, 1995), although these data do not establish the extent to which performance is actually impaired. However, van Kemenade et al. (1995) noted that 59% of professional musicians who reported MPA claimed that anxiety had impaired performance ability and/or well-being. Similar results have been found in samples of music students at universities and conservatoria (Kaspersen & Gotesdam, 2002; Wesner, Noyes, & Davis, 1990).

Adolescent and child musicians have reported similar patterns of MPA, with associated physiological arousal and cognitive and performance concerns similar to those reported by their older counterparts (Fehm & Schmidt, 2004; Osborne & Kenny, 2008; Ryan, 1998, 2004). Boucher and Ryan (2011) found that MPA can occur in children at the early stages of musical training. About 90% of adult musicians begin their musical learning before 12 years of age and 46% of these before the age of 7 (Nagel, 1993). Thus improved understanding of MPA in young musicians would be beneficial, both to those who go on to work in a highly competitive industry, but also for those performing at an amateur or semi-professional level.

Gender differences

Anxiety is characterized by a 2:1 female to male prevalence ratio (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). This prevalence is somewhat evident in MPA (e.g., Wesner et al., 1990) with professional female musicians more frequently reporting anxiety during performance and that these experiences detrimentally impacted their musical careers. In younger samples females have also reported significantly higher MPA than males (e.g., Osborne & Kenny, 2005, d = .42; Rae & McCambridge, 2004, d = .63). However, Ryan (2005) found that in school children aged 5–13 years gender differences were not apparent until beyond 9–10 years of age, indicating that these gender differences may not emerge at younger ages.

Trait anxiety

Spielberger (1983) described trait anxiety as a relatively stable predisposition to experience chronic anxiety and anticipated worry. It is therefore expected to influence a musician’s vulnerability to MPA (Liston, Frost, & Mohr, 2003). Consistent with this, Lehrer, Goldman, and Strommen (1990) found that 25% of variance in their various measures of performance anxiety was directly attributable to trait anxiety. Cox and Kenardy (1993) found that tertiary music students with higher trait anxiety reported higher MPA than those with lower trait anxiety across different performance settings, including practice (d = .8), with a group in front of an audience (d = .66), or solo in front of an audience (d = .92). A similar association between trait anxiety and MPA has also been reported for adolescents (e.g., Osborne & Kenny, 2005; Smith & Rickard, 2004). Trait anxiety has also been found to be significantly higher in those who retrospectively reported poorer performance compared to others who did not (Osborne & Kenny, 2008).

Other personality domains

Although it has sometimes been suggested that introversion might be advantageous to musical performance (Kemp, 1981), more recent research has suggested the opposite. Extraversion has been reported to be moderately negatively correlated with anxiety and MPA, whereas neuroticism and related constructs like low self-esteem and over-perfectionism are positively correlated (Gershuny & Sher, 1998; Hallam, Papageorgi, & Welch, 2007; Steptoe & Fidler, 1987). Similar results have been found with adolescent samples (Rae & McCambridge, 2004; Smith & Rickard, 2004). MPA has not been found to be associated with the other Big Five domains of openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness (Hallam et al., 2007).

Coping

Theory distinguishes between productive coping strategies (behaviours that are helpful in dealing with anxiety) and unproductive (ineffective) strategies (Lewis & Frydenberg, 2002), but measuring these two types has proved problematic. Thus, in adult samples, counter-intuitive moderate positive relationships have been found between engaging in productive anxiety coping behaviours and increasing MPA (Kenny, Davis, & Oates, 2004; Lehrer et al., 1990). Among adolescents, Lewis and Frydenberg (2002) showed that unproductive coping strategies were the strongest predictors of items that loaded on a factor that defined inability to deal with a problem. However, strategies defined as productive were also positively correlated with failure to deal with a problem and there was significant positive correlation between the productive and unproductive styles (r = .4), raising doubt about the validity of these measures.

Fehm and Schmidt (2004) investigated the reported effectiveness of short- and long-term coping strategies to reduce MPA in adolescent music students. Both short-term strategies, such as rehearsing immediately before a performance, and long-term, such as practice coupled with discussion with classmates, were deemed moderately helpful. However, although this study highlighted broad trends in adolescent coping with MPA and confirmed that a majority of participants desired further help to deal with MPA, possible relationships between different kinds of coping and MPA were not further explored.

The current study

Consistent with the foregoing review, the first aim was to assess to what extent self-reported MPA could be predicted by gender, trait anxiety, extraversion and neuroticism in a sample of adolescent musicians, either singularly or combined. The second aim was to identify the coping patterns typically associated with MPA in adolescents. From the literature, five hypotheses were: (i) females have higher MPA than males; (ii) trait anxiety is positively correlated with MPA; (iii) neuroticism is positively correlated with MPA; (iv) extraversion is negatively correlated with MPA; and (v) higher MPA is associated with higher use of unproductive coping strategies. A third aim, breaking new ground, was to explore whether an anxious disposition underpins correlations between higher neuroticism, higher introversion, poorer coping and higher MPA; that is, whether MPA is mediated by trait anxiety.

Method

Participants

A sample of 90 volunteers (49 females and 41 males aged 12–18 years; M = 15.1, SD = 1.25) from four secondary schools with selective music training programmes in metropolitan Adelaide (two government and two independent) agreed to participate. Participants were required to be currently learning a musical instrument and be performing at least once a year in either a solo or ensemble context.

Measures

Demographics

Data collected by questionnaire, prior to completion of the following test battery, were gender, age, principal and other instruments, length of time studied, daily practice duration, desire to be a professional musician, age first performed for an audience, patterns and frequency of performing, and perceived level of anxiety associated with music performance.

Music Performance Anxiety Inventory for Adolescents (MPAI-A; Osborne & Kenny, 2005)

Fifteen items measure somatic (e.g., ‘Before I perform, I tremble or shake’), cognitive (e.g., ‘I often worry about my ability to perform’), and behavioural (e.g., ‘I would rather play on my own than in front of other people’) characteristics of anxiety, rated on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 6 (all of the time). Higher scores indicate higher MPA.

State-Trait Anxiety Inventory – Trait subscale (STAI-T; Spielberger, 1983)¹

The STAI-T measures relatively stable individual differences in the tendency to perceive stressful situations as dangerous or threatening. Twenty items assess these differences, each on a 4-point Likert scale from 1 (almost never) to 4 (almost always). Higher scores indicate higher levels of trait anxiety.

Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised – Short Form (JEPQR-SF; Corulla, 1990)

The JEPQR-SF assesses individual differences in the personality domains of extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism and includes a lie scale to assess the degree to which individuals portray themselves more favourably. To reduce the length of our test battery, we removed items measuring psychoticism, which has only rarely been included in this field, leaving 36 items to which participants responded ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Adolescent Coping Scale – Short Form (ACS-SF; Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993)

The ACS-SF, adapted from the longer ACS, assesses 18 different coping strategies used by adolescents. Agreement between the short and long forms is high. The short form has an additional advantage that it can be directed to a specific area of concern, in this case music performance. Participants answer 18 items measuring each strategy on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (doesn’t apply or don’t do it) to 5 (used a great deal). Higher scores indicate more frequent use of coping strategies. The 18 items are factored into three latent domains: solving the problem (e.g., ‘work at solving the problem to the best of my ability’); reference to others (e.g., ‘pray for help and guidance so that everything will be all right’); and non-productive coping (e.g., ‘shut myself off from the problem so that I can avoid it’).

Procedure

All measures were presented in their original format, including instructions, but online using Survey Monkey. This program provided secure access to the survey by a hyperlink sent to a designated email address, precluding the possibility of missing data, and permitting convenient data download for statistical analysis. Completion of the questionnaire took approximately 20 minutes.

Results

Descriptive statistics

Means and standard deviations for selected demographic characteristics are shown in Table 1. All participants met selection criteria: they started learning musical instruments at about age 7, had been studying their primary instrument for an average of almost 7 years and had practiced their major instrument for an average of almost 45 minutes a day. Almost one-third indicated that they wanted to become professional musicians. More than two-thirds performed in front of others at least once a month, with almost 30% indicating some level of MPA. Table 2 shows internal reliabilities found here for all measures. These confirmed moderate to strong reliability, consistent with published reliability data, with the exception of the reference to others scale in the ACS-SF, which was therefore excluded from further analysis.

Table 1.

Descriptive statistics for current age, age when participant first started learning an instrument, years learning primary instrument, and time practised per day.

Demographic	M	SD	Range
Current age (years)	15.14	1.25	12–18
Age when participant first started learning an instrument (years)	7.49	2.38	3–15
Years learning primary instrument	6.59	2.46	2–13
Time practised per day (min)	43.81	31.77	10–180

Table 2.

Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for all scales and subscales for the Music Performance Anxiety Inventory for Adolescents (MPAI-A), State-Trait Anxiety Inventory – Trait Subscale (STAI-T), extraversion, neuroticism, and lie subscales of the Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised – Short Form (JEPQR-SF), and Adolescent Coping Scale – Short Form (ACS-SF).

Scale	Cronbach’s alpha
MPAI-A	.90
STAI	.93
JEPQR-SF
Extraversion	.79
Neuroticism	.85
Lie	.59
ACS-SF
Solving the problem	.54
Reference to others	−.14
Non-productive coping	.78

Descriptive statistics for measures, together with published comparative data, are presented in Table 3. Scale and subscale distributions were normal with the exception of the extraversion subscale of the JEPQ-R, which was negatively skewed, although not sufficiently to warrant transformation of these data.

Table 3.

Descriptive statistics for the Music Performance Anxiety Inventory for Adolescents (MPAI-A), State-Trait Anxiety Inventory – Trait Subscale (STAI-T), and extraversion, neuroticism, and lie subscales of the Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised – Short Form (JEPQR-SF).

Scale	Sample				Comparative data

	M	SD	Range	n	M	SD	Range	n
MPAI-A
Females	56.45	17.06	15–85	49	46.27	19.83	0–84	174
Males	47.29	15.95	11–68	41	38.23	17.93	3–87	124
Total	52.28	17.10	11–85	90	42.92	19.44	0–87	298
STAI-T
Females	47.31	11.61	25–80	49	40.97	10.63	—	222
Males	44.12	10.38	24–64	41	40.17	10.53	—	202
Total	45.86	11.12	24–80	90	—		—	—
JEPQR-SF
Extraversion
Females	8.48	2.99	2–12	49	—		—	—
Males	9.27	2.47	3–12	41	—		—	—
Total	8.84	2.78	2–12	90	—		—	—
Neuroticism
Females	7.88	3.09	0–12	49	—		—	—
Males	5.76	3.44	0–11	41	—		—	—
Total	6.91	3.41	0–12	90	—		—	—
Lie
Females	5.51	2.34	0–11	49	—		—	—
Males	3.90	1.67	1–8	41	—		—	—
Total	4.78	2.20	0–11	90	—		—	—

Group comparisons

Mean MPAI-A score for the study sample was significantly higher (t [386] = 4.11, p < .001, two-tailed, d = .51) than for the sample of adolescent musicians (Osborne & Kenny, 2005). Mean male and female STAI-T scores were significantly higher than for normative secondary school students drawn from the general population (Spielberger, 1983; t [241] = 2.20, p = .029, two-tailed, d = .38; t [269] = 3.71, p < .001, two-tailed, d = .57, respectively). For the JEPQ-R, comparable normative data were not available.²

As shown in Table 3, although males and females did not differ for STAI-T (t [88] = 1.36, p = .177), MPAI-A scores for females were higher than for males (t [88] = 2.61, p = .011, two-tailed, d = .55), supporting the first hypothesis.

Correlations

Hypotheses 2, 3 and 4 were supported: trait anxiety and neuroticism were positively correlated with MPA (r [88] = .59, p < .01, r [88] = .52, p < .01, respectively), and extraversion was negatively correlated with MPA (r [88] = −.33, p < .01). Hypothesis 5 was also supported, with non-productive coping correlating with MPA (r [88] = .50, p < .01).

Regression analysis

Stepwise multiple regression demonstrated that the correlations between MPA and the variables of gender, extraversion, neuroticism, and non-productive coping were substantially accounted for by trait anxiety. Setting MPA as the predicted outcome, the five other variables were entered as predictors into the model in order from strongest to weakest significant simple linear correlation with MPA (see Table 4). Preliminary analyses confirmed no violation of the assumptions of normality, linearity, multicollinearity, and homoscedasticity. Trait anxiety (r = .59), entered at step 1, explained 35% of the variance in MPA scores, F(1, 88) = 47.63, p = < .001. Entering neuroticism (r = .52) at step 2 explained no further significant variance in MPA scores, and this remained the case for non-productive coping (r = .5), extraversion (r = −.33), and gender (r = −.27) entered at steps 3, 4, and 5 respectively. Thus trait anxiety remained the sole significant predictor of MPA at all levels of the regression analysis.

Table 4.

Prediction of music performance anxiety (MPA) by trait anxiety, neuroticism, non-productive coping, extraversion, and gender.

Variable	ΔR²	b	SE	β
Step 1
Trait anxiety		.91	.13	.59**
Step 2
Trait anxiety		.70	.19	.46**
Neuroticism		.92	.63	.18
	.02
Step 3
Trait anxiety		.62	.22	.40**
Neuroticism		.77	.66	.15
Non-productive coping		.31	.38	.11
	.01
Step 4
Trait anxiety		.60	.22	.39**
Neuroticism		.60	.66	.12
Non-productive coping		.30	.38	.10
Extraversion		−.99	.55	−.16
	.02
Step 5
Trait anxiety		.63	.21	.41**
Neuroticism		.22	.69	.05
Non-productive coping		.35	.37	.12
Extraversion		−.92	.54	−.15
Gender		−5.49	3.04	−.16
	.02

p < .05; **p < .01.

Discussion

The aims of this study were to assess the extent to which MPA in adolescent music students is predicted by gender, trait anxiety, extraversion and neuroticism, to identify coping patterns typically associated with MPA, and to test whether correlations between neuroticism, extraversion, coping and MPA were mediated by trait anxiety. Consistent with previous research in both adult and adolescent samples, female gender, higher neuroticism, lower extraversion and non-productive coping were associated with higher MPA but these variables did not explain unique variance beyond trait anxiety. Thus all five hypotheses were supported but stepwise multiple regression demonstrated that correlations with MPA between gender, neuroticism, extraversion and non-productive coping were significantly accounted for by trait anxiety. STAI-T scores shared approximately 35% of their variance with MPAI-A scores, consistent with earlier reports (Cox & Kenardy, 1993; Kenny et al., 2004; Lehrer et al., 1990; Osborne & Kenny, 2005, 2008; Smith & Rickard, 2004). Nonetheless, the model left substantial variance unexplained and future research should explore what other variables might help to explain MPA variance. A potential line of enquiry is the relevance of coping strategies to the management of MPA. Although the influence of non-productive coping in our study was largely accounted for by trait anxiety, we found that the ‘reference to others’ scale from the ACS-SF had poor reliability and therefore discarded this aspect. However, consideration might be given to the development of alternative measures of coping that could be used to explore further the nature of MPA. Research could also consider whether the association between these broad personality variables, particularly extraversion and neuroticism, and trait anxiety, which is a facet of these, is the same in adult samples, or whether personality variables become more salient in predicting MPA over time as performance situations change. In the current sample, linear correlations between neuroticism and trait anxiety found approximately 55% shared variance, suggesting a connection between these, although they are not necessarily one and the same.

We found that mean MPAI-A scores for females and males differed by approximately three fifths of a standard deviation. In other words, the average female MPAI-A score was at approximately the 72nd percentile of the male MPAI-A score distribution, a significant difference. These gender differences in adolescents (but not in younger samples; see Ryan, 2005) may be explained in part by the social context of music performance insofar as females tend to display significantly greater fear than males of being on display in front of others (Essau, Conradt & Petermann, 1999). Mean MPAI-A scores for females and males in our study were significantly higher compared to a large sample (N = 298) of music students also drawn from an Australian population (Osborne & Kenny, 2005). It is unlikely that our participating schools maintained higher conditions of excellence than those in the 2005 sample; Australian schools of this kind require selective auditions for entry and they maintain high standards throughout extensive programmes as part of their curricula (Osborne, Kenny & Holsomback, 2005). More probably the moderate effect size (d = .48) has been inflated by the low participation response rate in our study (37%), if it is assumed that those individuals consenting to participate did so because they had already experienced higher MPA and were curious about the topic. In any case it is clear that, for further research in MPA with adolescents, performance standards and contexts within schools and institutions will need to be considered as a factor influencing variance in MPA, particularly when attempting to anchor the data to normative samples.

It was also the case that mean STAI-T scores for females and males were higher in the study sample compared to normative values established by Spielberger (1983). Again this might reflect the low response rate, although it could reflect an inherent relationship between musical temperament and higher trait anxiety (Kenny et al., 2004; Osborne & Kenny, 2005).

We found a small non-significant negative correlation between the ‘solving the problem’ and ‘non-productive coping’ subscales, suggesting that the use of productive strategies is unrelated to the use of unproductive strategies, contrary to Lewis and Frydenberg’s (2002) claim that productive and unproductive coping strategies in adolescents are not mutually exclusive from one another. However, the possibility of co-occurrence cannot be discounted because we used a short form of the ACS whereas Lewis and Frydenberg (2002) used the long form. Another coping strategy identified by Fehm and Schmidt (2004) that was specific to MPA was rehearsing difficult parts, which was deemed moderately helpful by their participants. In the current study, however, no particular subtype of practice was established and only average practice per day was obtained. Although more average practice per day tended to be associated with less MPA, the correlation was not significant. This suggests that, although practice is imperative for task efficacy, it may not play as significant a role in the reduction of MPA, despite Fehm and Schmidt’s result.

Our review of the literature identified no longitudinal studies on MPA, so that any assessment of the stability of MPA and influence of factors between different age groups could only be achieved through cross-sectional comparisons. It would certainly be useful to track levels of MPA in musicians from adolescence to early adulthood and to identify those variables that influenced MPA over the period of transition to professional employment, with a view to controlling such variables so as to reduce MPA to levels that do not disadvantage music performance and allow for an enjoyable, comfortable, and rewarding experience for the performer. In conclusion, the current study has shown that the relation of MPA in adolescents to gender, neuroticism, and extraversion is principally attributed to level of trait anxiety. We have found the MPAI-A to be a useful self-report tool for measuring MPA and it might therefore prove useful for identifying at an early stage those young music students prone to higher levels of MPA, with a view to early preventive intervention.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the students, their parents and teachers at the schools involved for their participation.

Funding

The research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

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Performance anxiety in adolescent musicians

Abstract

Keywords

Gender differences

Trait anxiety

Other personality domains

Coping

The current study

Method

Participants

Measures

Demographics

Music Performance Anxiety Inventory for Adolescents (MPAI-A; Osborne & Kenny, 2005)

State-Trait Anxiety Inventory – Trait subscale (STAI-T; Spielberger, 1983) 1

Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised – Short Form (JEPQR-SF; Corulla, 1990)

Adolescent Coping Scale – Short Form (ACS-SF; Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993)

Procedure

Results

Descriptive statistics

Group comparisons

Correlations

Regression analysis

Discussion

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Funding

Notes

References

State-Trait Anxiety Inventory – Trait subscale (STAI-T; Spielberger, 1983)¹