The reliability and validity of the Seashore Tests of Musical Talent

Abstract

An introductory section states the claims made for the tests by their author and the results of the two studies heretofore made upon them. In the present study the six tests were given twice, four months apart, to about 108 junior and senior high school students. The reliability coefficients were 0.71 for pitch, 0.65 for intensity, 0.48 for time, 0.43 for consonance, 0.59 for memory, and 0.29 for rhythm, with probable errors from 0.03 to 0.06. Musical instructors ranked the subjects on innate musical ability (reliability of ranking, 0.94 by re-ranking after four months); the average test score correlated o.38 with these ranks, memory alone correlating 0.41 and all the rest below 0.18. Intercorrelations between age, test score, teachers' ranks and intelligence rating (Army Alpha and Otis) ranged from 0.38 to -.34; of the 15 intercorrelations among the tests themselves, 3 were above 0.30. Partialling out age and intelligence from the correlation between test score and teachers' ranks lowered it from 0.38 to 0.35. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)