Usability of the Primary Measures of Music Audiation (PMMA) and the Intermediate Measures of Music Audiation (IMMA) with Elementary School Students in China

The purpose of this research was to explore the usability of PMMA and IMMA within the context of Chinese culture. To achieve this purpose, the following questions guided the research: 1. How does Chinese students' performance on PMMA and IMMA compare to American students' performance? 2. To what extent do PMMA and IMMA measure the single construct of tonal audiation? 3. To what extent do PMMA and IMMA measure the single construct of rhythm audiation? 4. To what extent are the two measures reliable within the context of Chinese culture? 5. Which items from PMMA and IMMA contribute to a measure of music audiation appropriate within the context of Chinese culture? 6. How can PMMA and IMMA be adapted for use with Chinese students?;Both traditional statistical techniques and Rasch model techniques were used in this study. Descriptive statistics, including means, standard deviations, item difficulty and discrimination indices, and t-tests were used to see whether Chinese students perform similarly to American students on these tests. Rasch modeling was used to improve the Primary Measure of Music Audiation (PMMA) and the Intermediate Measure of Music Audiation (IMMA) via multiple runs of data. Results provided evidence that the performance of Chinese and American students on PMMA and IMMA were somewhat different. PMMA and IMMA were not entirely suitable for Chinese students although overall the many items of the two instruments demonstrated good qualities when used with Chinese students. Based on the results of Rasch modeling, the researcher developed a new test -- integrating good items from PMMA and IMMA -- to use with Chinese students. Thus, data were collected twice by the researcher. The first data collection served to answer all research questions, while the second data collection served to examine suitability of the new test for Chinese students.;It is strongly recommended that in order to measure the developmental music aptitude of Chinese students, new items, especially with Chinese traditional music characteristics, should be written to fill in the difficulty level gaps that existed in the original tests and still existed in the new test.