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MusemapLast updated on:
13. Oct. 2025
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.
Demos of all current versions can be tested here.
The PROMS has satisfactory psychometric properties for the composite score (internal consistency and test-retest > .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:
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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159103 [Brief-PROMS]
Law, L. N., & Zentner, M. (2012). Assessing musical abilities objectively: construction and validation of the profile of music perception skills. PloS one, 7(12), e52508. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0052508 [PROMS-S, Mini-PROMS]
Strauss, H., Reiche, S., Dick, M., & Zentner, M. (2024). Online assessment of musical ability in 10 minutes: Development and validation of the Micro-PROMS. Behavior Research Methods, 56(3), 1968-1983. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-023-02130-4 [Micro-PROMS]
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, 1440, 33-45. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.13410 [Full-PROMS, Brief-PROMS]
If you would like to use the PROMS battery in your academic research project, we can set up a research account for you. This will enable
you to use the battery to collect your own data.
To get your own research account, simply click on the link below and follow the instructions:
To access the data of your research, open your PROMS version and select Responses in the survey menu. You will then see an overview of the responses as well as the raw data.
To export your data, click on the export icon and then choose Export responses. There you first need to choose your preferred format. If you select csv or Excel, make sure that all variables on the right-hand side are selected, so that the full data set is exported. We recommend using all default settings, except for the following:
Responses, select Export responses as: Answer codes. This way, answers are coded as described in the “Scoring” section below.Headings, select Export questions as: Question code. This does not only make your dataset easier to navigate, but also allows you to use the > PROMS Scoring App to obtain sensitivity estimates (d-prime scores).If you are using SPSS to analyse your data, you can fast-track your data download by clicking on the export icon and then choose Export Results to SPSS. 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 be ready to go 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.