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Attributional Beliefs In Music Learning: 'Talent' Or Hard Work?, Brian Joseph Harris

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Attributional beliefs of three distinct groups regarding the sources of musical skill—hard work or innate/internal -- were explored through two separate studies. Subjects for the pilot study consisted of thirty-seven private university music majors compared with adult chancel choir members, while the thesis study compared the responses of thirty-four public university music majors with chancel choir members. All subjects responded to researcher-developed attributive questionnaires. The pilot study indicated that a majority had the same notion, that musical skill comes from hard work and innate ability, with no statistical difference between private university music majors and the adult non-majors, p < .9999, on the Freeman-Halton extension of Fisher’s. Differences were found in the thesis study, with the majority of public university music majors favoring hard work and the adult non-majors equally divided between the two choices, resulting in a statistically significant difference at p < .0016 on Freeman-Halton extension of Fisher’s.