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The Motivation for Learning Music (MLM) questionnaire: Assessing children’s and adolescents’ autonomous motivation for learning a musical instrument

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the psychometric properties and construct validity of The Motivation for Learning Music (MLM) questionnaire, designed to measure the autonomous motivation of young music students. Based on Self-Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan in Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior, Plenum, New York, 1985), the instrument consists of five subscales, each assessing a different type of motivation: intrinsic motivation, identification and integration, introjection, external regulation, and amotivation. We studied 337 child–parent pairs, with 257 of the children studying piano, and 80 studying violin. The children were age 6–17. The item pool was administered to the children, and various construct validation measures were administered to the children and/or their parents. For the final MLM, we selected 5 items per subscale, based on their psychometric properties and a desire to adequately cover each content domain. Each subscale formed a distinct component in principal components analysis; the questionnaire performed well in confirmatory factor analysis; the inter-correlations of the subscales had a consistent simplex pattern; and all subscales had alphas above .80.

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Notes

  1. There is research on SDT in many domains, such as medicine and health care (Ryan et al. 1995; Williams et al. 1998), education (Cokley 2000; Deci et al. 1991; Ryan and Connell 1989; Vallerand and Bissonnette 1992; Vallerand et al. 1989), sports (Kavussanu and Roberts 1996; Kim and Gill 1997; Mitchell 1996; Pelletier et al. 1995a), the workplace (Deci et al. 2001), leisure (Pelletier et al. 1995b), interpersonal relationships (Blais et al. 1990), life aspirations (Kasser and Ryan 2001; Williams et al. 2000), parenting (Grolnick et al. 1997), and religion (Ryan et al. 1993).

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Acknowledgements

This study was carried out at the Piano Pedagogy Research Laboratory at the University of Ottawa. We thank the many students of the laboratory for their contribution to the data collection, especially Nisreen Jardaneh, Yifei Liu, Karen Gerelus (formerly King), Andrea Yau, and Samar Abi Nasr.

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Correspondence to Gilles Comeau.

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Appendix

Appendix

Comparison of previous version (containing 18 items) with the current version (containing 25 items)

Previous version

Current version

Amotivation

 But I don’t care if I play piano or not

But I don’t care if I play piano/violin or not

 But I don’t see the point in learning to play the piano

But I don’t see the point in learning to play the piano/violin

 But it is a waste of my time

But it is a waste of my time

 But learning to play the piano is not worth all the trouble

But learning to play the piano is not worth all the trouble

 But I don’t feel excited about it

But I don’t feel excited about it

 But I don’t know why I am doing it

But I don’t know why I am doing it

 

But I don’t want to do it

 

But I am not interested in it

External regulation

 Because my teacher would be disappointed if I stopped playing

Because my teacher would be disappointed if I stopped playing

 Because my parents would be upset if I quit playing the piano

Because my parents would be upset if I quit playing the piano/violin

 Because my parents would be disappointed if I stopped playing

Because my parents would be disappointed if I stopped playing

 

Because my teacher would be upset with me if I stopped

 

Because I will get in trouble if I don’t

Introjection

 Because I would be ashamed if I stopped playing

Because I would be ashamed if I stopped playing

 Because I would feel bad if I didn’t learn to play the piano

Because I would feel bad if I didn’t learn to play the piano

 

Because I would be ashamed of myself if I stopped playing

 

Because I would feel bad about myself if I didn’t learn to play the piano/violin

 

Because I would feel embarrassed if I stopped

 

Because I would feel anxious if I didn’t

 

Because I would feel guilty if I don’t

Identification and integration

 Because I want to be a musician when I grow up

Because I want to be a musician when I grow up

 Because I see myself as a musician

Because I see myself as a musician

 

Because this is what a musician does

 

Because I made the decision to become a good piano/violin player

 

Because this is part of who I am

Intrinsic motivation

 Because I like the sound the piano makes

Because I like the sound the piano makes

 Because I enjoy learning new pieces

Because I enjoy learning new pieces

 Because playing the piano is a lot of fun

Because playing the piano/violin is a lot of fun

 Because it makes me feel good

Because it makes me feel good

 Because I enjoy learning new things about music

Because I enjoy learning new things about music

 

Because it is really interesting

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Comeau, G., Huta, V., Lu, Y. et al. The Motivation for Learning Music (MLM) questionnaire: Assessing children’s and adolescents’ autonomous motivation for learning a musical instrument. Motiv Emot 43, 705–718 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-019-09769-7

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