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
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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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 I don’t feel excited about 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 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 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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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-019-09769-7