How musical are you?

The Gold-MSI is a new self-report inventory to assess individual differences in musical sophistication. It measures the ability to engage with music in a flexible, effective, and nuanced way. It aims to assess musical sophistication independent of individual preferences for specific styles (e.g. classical, pop, rock), and to be sensitive to differences among ‘non-musicians’. It is multi-faceted and distinguishes between different aspects of musical sophistication. The self-report inventory has sub-scales for the following facets:

• Active Musical Engagement, e.g. how much time and money resources are spent on music
• Self-reported Perceptual Abilities, e.g. accuracy of musical listening skills
• Musical Training, e.g. amount of formal musical training received
• Self-reported Singing Abilities, e.g. accuracy of one’s own singing
• Sophisticated Emotional Engagement with Music, e.g. ability to talk about emotions that music expresses

The survey provides a subscore for each of the above categories, as well as a ‘General Musical Sophistication’ factor that incorporates aspects from all five sub-scales. This inventory comprises 38 questions belonging to 5 sub-scale categories. 31 questions use likert scales to measure agreement with various statements about musical behavior and experience, and 7 multiple choice questions ask about specific durations of training and practice of music theory and performance.

Resources:

• Müllensiefen, D., Gingras, B., Musil, J., & Stewart, L. (2014). The musicality of non-musicians: an index for assessing musical sophistication in the general population. PloS one, 9(2), e89642
• Greenberg, D., Müllensiefen, D., Lamb, M., & Rentfrow, P.J. (2015). Personality predicts musical sophistication. Journal of Research in Personality, 58, 154-158
• Müllensiefen, D., Harrison, P., Caprini, F., & Fancourt, A. (2015). Investigating the importance of self-theories of intelligence and musicality for students' academic and musical achievement. Frontiers in Psychology, 6:1702
• https://www.gold.ac.uk/music-mind-brain/gold-msi/

Parameters
The following features can be tweaked:

• Language (American English, Español, Français)

Disclaimer
The following languages that are currently offered for this survey are not validated translations. This survey was translated using Google Translate and verified by members of the community.

What data is collected? How is it scored?
The following variables are recorded:

• GMSI_AE_subscore (active engagement)
• GMSI_PA_subscore (perceptual abilities)
• GMSI_MT_subscore (musical training)
• GMSI_SA_subscore (singing ability)
• GMSI_E_subscore (emotional engagement)
• GMSI_GF_subscore (general factor)
• GMSI_totalScore

Raw data: 38 questions broken into 5 categories (active engagement, perceptual abilities, musical training, singing ability, emotional engagement). Each question uses a 5-point likert scale. 14 questions are reverse-coded.

Calculation:
Scores are calculated by finding the sum of the scores for each sub-scale, taking into account reverse-scoring for some questions. A "general factor" score is also calculated using certain questions from all 5 subscales. NOTE: this "general factor" subscore takes into account 17 or the 38 questions, and is not synonymous with the "totalscore" variable.