Last updated at:
29. Nov. 2021
The PROMS User Guide can also be downloaded as PDF file.
The Profile of Music Perception Skills (PROMS; Law & Zentner, 2012) is a novel musical test battery that measures perceptual musical skills objectively across nine different modalities (melody, pitch, timbre, tuning, rhythm, embedded rhythm, metric accent, tempo, and loudness). For each task, participants are asked to indicate whether stimuli presented are same or different.
All current versions as well as a 3 minute demo showing how the online PROMS works (including the type of feedback that is offered to participants) can be accessed at here.
The PROMS has satisfactory psychometric properties for the composite score (internal consistency and test-retest r>.85) and fair to good coefficients for the individual subtests (.56 to.85). Convergent validity was established with the relevant dimensions of Gordon’s Advanced Measures of Music Audiation and Musical Aptitude Profile (melody, rhythm, tempo), the Musical Ear Test (rhythm), and sample instrumental sounds (timbre). Criterion validity was evidenced by consistently sizeable and significant relationships between test performance and external musical proficiency indicators in all three studies (.38 to.62, p<.05 to p<.01). An absence of correlations between test scores and a nonmusical auditory discrimination task supports the battery’s discriminant validity (−.05, ns). The interrelationships among the various subtests could be accounted for by two higher order factors, sequential and sensory music processing.
For details see:
Zentner, M. & Strauss, H. (2017). Assessing musical ability quickly and objectively: Development and validation of the Short-PROMS and the Mini-PROMS. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. doi: 10.1111/nyas.13410
Kunert R., Willems R. M., Hagoort, P. (2016). An Independent Psychometric Evaluation of the PROMS Measure of Music Perception Skills. PLoS ONE 11(7): e0159103.
Law, L. & Zentner, M. (2012). Assessing musical abilities objectively: Construction and validation of the Profile of Music Perception Skills. PLoS ONE 7(12): e52508.
If you would like to use the PROMS battery in your academic research project, we can set up a researcher account for you. This will enable you to use the battery to collect your own data.
1.
Download the User Agreement Form
Download the PROMS User Agreement Form.
2.
Send the User Agreement Form
Send the completed and signed agreement form together with a brief description (about 250 words) of the project in which you want to use the PROMS to .
This description should include a short paragraph about: a) the aims of the study, b) the prospective sample size, c) the procedure, and d) the anticipated implications the results. Please also let us know which version(s) of the PROMS you want to use in your project.
3.
Receive Your Own PROMS Research Account
Upon approval of your request, you will receive an unique URL that provides access to your own PROMS research account. We do our best to proceed your requests as quickly as possible – however, please note that it might take a few days until you receive an
answer.
You can extend the PROMS by adding questions or questionnaires that are of interest to you.
Data are securely stored on server of the University of Innsbruck IT Department.
To access the data of your research, hover over the Responses
symbol and choose Responses & Statistics
. Choose Display Responses
to view responses.
To export data to Excel or any other spreadsheet software, choose Export Results to Application
, then choose Abbreviated Question Text
as well as CSV File
and click Export Data
(ignore the other options).
To export data to SPSS, choose Export Results to a SPSS/PASW Command File
. Download both files. Open the SPSS syntax file and change the /FILE
path to point to the data file (e.g. /FILE='C:/users/docs/survey1234_SPSS_data_file.dat'
). Click Run > All
. You should have your data now.
DS
means ‘definitely same’, DD
means ‘definitely different’, PS
means ‘probably same’, PD
means ‘probably different’, and NO
means ‘I don’t know’.
Correct answers are coded as 1
with 2 points, correct but uncertain answers (PP
or PS
) are coded as P
with 1 point. All remaining answers that are not correct are coded as stated above (DS
, PS
, NO
, PD
, or DD
).
Scores are automatically computed by LimeSurvey and included in the exported data file. Variables containing scores are labelled as followed: PROMSMELODYSCORE
(Melody), PROMSRHYTHMSCORE
(Rhythm), PROMSRMSCORE
(Embedded Rhythm), PROMSTUNINGSCORE
(Tuning), PROMSBEATSCORE
(Metric Accent), PROMSTIMBRESCORE
(Timbre), PROMSSPEEDSCORE
(Tempo), PROMSPITCHSCORE
(Pitch), PROMSTOTALSCORE
(total score).
To manually compute the subscale scores, take the sum of all items within the scale and divide it by 2. For the total scale just add the subscale scores. If you work with IBM SPSS or R, we can send you a syntax/script to automatically compute scores for data analysis.
Please note that the PROMS is an online test and thus an internet connection is required to administer the test. Please contact us via mail if you want to administer the PROMS offline.