Standardization of the Gordon Primary Measures of Music Audiation in Greece

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to standardize the Primary Measures of Music Audiation in Greece ( N = 1,188). Split-halves reliability was acceptable across grade levels (K through 3) for the Tonal and Rhythm subtests, but test—retest reliability was generally unacceptable, especially for the Rhythm subtest. Concurrent validity was mixed, with teacher ratings of musical achievement generally significantly correlated with Tonal but not Rhythm subtest scores. Composite test means were significantly higher for suburban and urban samples than for rural samples and were significantly higher for higher grade levels. Item difficulty coefficients were significantly correlated across grade levels. The Greek and U.S. composite means were similar except for a significantly higher U.S. mean for grade 1. However, when the rural subgroup was removed from the Greek sample to equate with the U.S. norming sample, there were nonsignificant differences for grades K through 1, but significant differences in favor of the Greek sample for grades 3 and 4.

Meta-Analytic Evidence of the Criterion Validity of Gordon’s Music Aptitude Tests in Published Music Education Research

“…In the current study, the PMMA produced particularly weak and inconsistent associations with musical outcomes, echoing other reports of the test’s instability during students’ progression through developmental stages of aptitude (Cutietta, 1991; Forsythe, 1984; Stamou et al, 2010). This cannot be attributed solely to the fact that the PMMA measures developmental (and therefore less stable) aptitude because meta-regression results clearly indicated that aptitude type exerted minimal influence on the magnitude of associations.…”

“…Evidence of the longitudinal predictive validity of Gordon’s tests has appeared in numerous publications, including the manuals accompanying each test, with reported coefficients ranging from .67 (IMMA-Total) to .82 (AMMA-Composite) (Gordon, 1967, 1979, 1984, 1990). Subsequent replications of and refinements to the validation of each test often produced lower correlations (Gordon, 1970b, 1975, 1989b; Gromko, 2004; Klinedinst, 1991; Stamou, Schmidt, & Humphreys, 2010; Woodruff, 1983).…”

Early Influence of Musical Abilities and Working Memory on Speech Imitation Abilities: Study with Pre-School Children

“…Even though this test is widely used for measuring musical aptitude, there are some limitations concerning the validity of the test. According to Stamouet et al [ 73 ], the results of the rhythm subtest should be regarded with caution for pre-school children and grade 1 students as a result of cross-cultural issues which may also be relevant for this investigation as the children were German native speakers. However, in this study similarly to research on adults, effects of individual differences in music perception, working memory capacity, speech imitation and singing have been found.…”

“…Even though this test is widely used for measuring musical aptitude, there are some limitations regarding the validity of the test. For instance, studies reported inconsistent results for the two subtests which show deviations from the published norms [ 72 , 73 ]. Another investigation noted that especially the internal reliability of the rhythm subtest should be treated with caution for grade 1 students and kindergarten children [ 73 ].…”

Selective Attention and Inhibitory Control of Attention Are Correlated With Music Audiation

“…However, some concerns with regard to the test need to be taken into account. For example, Yang (2002) reported that children of the first grade from Taiwan scored significantly lower than the published norms on the PMMA Tonal subtest and non-significantly lower on the Rhythm subtest (Yang, 2002;Stamou et al, 2010). These results are important for our study, since in our study we perform only the rhythm subtest.…”