Construction and Validation of a Computerized Assessment of Childrens Singing Accuracy

Singing is an important part of participation in both elementary school music and many informal musical activities. Lack of singing ability has been associated with self-perceptions of unmusicality that can negatively impact future participation in music. Despite the importance of this skill we have little reliable data on the prevalence of singing accuracy among the K-12 population. The purpose of the proposed research is to construct and validate a computerized assessment of singing accuracy that could be used to answer the following questions: 1) What percentage of school-age children are inaccurate singers? 2) Does the development of accurate singing plateau by a certain age without special instruction? and 3) What singing tasks are the easiest/hardest for children to perform? The goal is to provide teachers with an assessment of singing accuracy that is easy to administer and score so they can more readily identify students who are experiencing problems.