A Music Attitude Scale for Use with Upper Elementary School Children

Very few published instruments are available for the measurement of attitude of elementary school children toward music. An attitude instrument was developed and administered to fifth grade low socioeconomic inner-city minority children and to fifth grade upper middle-class suburban white children. A Likert-type scaling procedure was used, and the responses were interpreted using factor analysis. The rotated factor matrix for the final revision indicated 14 factors, several of which were independent, leading to the conclusion that the instrument measures several aspects of music attitude. Attitudes of children in two groups were compared. A significant difference (.01 level) was found between these groups.