A comparative study of college students' musical aptitude and musical preference in the United States and Taiwan

The purpose of this study was to examine U.S. and Taiwanese college students' musical aptitudes and musical preferences for six musical styles: Western classical, Chinese traditional, American pop, Taiwanese pop, jazz, and world musics. Samples of each style established by experts were reduced to 36 items, six excerpts from each. Subjects (N = 517) were recruited from the U.S. (n = 335) and Taiwan (n = 182). Stratified random selection procedures produced 160 U.S. and 160 Taiwanese subjects, with four training level groups of 40 subjects from each nationality: music majors, non-music majors with high musical training, non-music majors with medium musical training, and non-music majors with low musical training levels.; Subjects' musical aptitudes were measured by Gordon's Advanced Measures of Music Audiation (AMMA). Musical preferences were demonstrated by two investigator-designed verbal preference methods: the Musical Stimuli Test (MST) and the Verbal Musical Preference Rating (VMPR), and one behavioral method: the Report of Ownership of Musical Collections (ROMC). Reliabilities of the AMMA (r = .61 to .82) and of the MST and VMPR (Cronbach's alphas = .60 to .92 for the six styles) were acceptable for all instruments.; The major findings of this study were the following: (a) nationality, musical training level, and their interaction were related to subjects' musical aptitudes and verbal and behavioral preferences across the range of six styles; (b) musical aptitude was positively related to subjects' verbal and behavioral preferences across the range of six styles; (c) familiarity was significantly related to subjects' verbal and behavioral preferences for all six styles; (d) strong correlations between the MST and VMPR for all six styles suggested the high validity of these two instruments; and (e) low correlations among the MST, VMPR, and ROMC across the range of six styles showed that ROMC was a valid indicator for those styles.