音楽パフォーマンス不安の理解
Hello everyone, SCIEN-SPOT is a podcast that shines a spotlight on the latest scientific
technology from Japan. Your host is REN from SCIEN-TALK. Now, have you ever felt extremely
nervous or shocked when performing in front of people? Maybe for a test presentation, speech,
or an important game? This feeling, often called stage fright, is a very common human experience,
and it's incredibly prevalent in the world of music. Today, I'm going to talk about a study
that scientifically explains and helps us tackle this phenomenon, academically known as Music
Performance Anxiety, or MPA. First, let me introduce you to the SCIEN-SPOTcast. This
episode is part of a monthly project where Japanese SCIEN-SPOTcasters discuss a common theme,
this time our host is Kōgyō Kōkō Nōgyōbu, which is Industry High School Agriculture Club
in English, and the theme is stress, and I decided to cover musical stress for this episode. Also,
I recently appeared on Nippon Broadcasting's music talk show, Tokyo Music Institute, which I'll tell
you more about at the end of this episode, but for now, let's dive into today's main topic.
Music Performance Anxiety, or MPA, is often thought of as just a mental state,
but its effects actually reach deep into the quality of a performance. It's known to trigger
both psychological and physiological reactions, like a drop of concentration or a racing heart,
and imagine trying to give your best performance in front of a large audience, but your hands are
trembling, your breath is unsteady, and you can't produce the sound you want. It's incredibly
frustrating for any musician. One survey even found that a staggering 70% of musicians have
音楽パフォーマンス不安の評価
experienced MPA. It's a very rare and widespread challenge for them. The degree of MPA and how it
affects performance varies greatly from person to person. That's why accurately assessing and
understanding each individual's unique MPA is crucial for figuring out its mechanisms and
developing effective training methods. For a long time, the most widely used psychological tools
to measure MPA internationally has been the Kenny Music Performance Anxiety Inventory Revised,
or KMPA-IR. Developed in 2009, this questionnaire has been translated into 22 languages and serves
as a global standard for understanding musicians' MPA. You can think of it like a global thermometer
for MPA, just as our thermometers help us consistently measure body temperature worldwide.
Surprisingly, however, there was no Japanese version of the KMPA-IR until now, nor had its validity
been properly tested in Japanese. This means that Japanese musicians lacked a standardized
tool to accurately measure their stage fright against international benchmarks.
But that has changed. A research group from the University of Tokyo, the Graduate School of Frontier
Sciences, established ARP and they created a Japanese version of this international standard
questionnaire, the KMPA-IR, and rigorously validated its reliability and validity. First, the team
translated the original version into Japanese. Then, they conducted interviews with seven musicians,
including both professionals and amateurs. This was a crucial step not just to directly translate,
but to ensure the Japanese version sounded natural and felt appropriate to musicians'
日本の音楽家に関する調査
experience. Based on these interviews, the draft Japanese version was refined. Next, they collected
responses from a wide range of musicians in Japan using this revised Japanese version.
Professional musicians, 200 professional musicians, and 200 amateur musicians, totaling 40
participants. The group included 309 instrumentalists and 91 vocalists,
covering various musical fields. These diverse samples ensured that the data
would be highly reliable and applicable to Japanese musicians as a whole.
Finally, they used statistical methods to scientifically confirm that the questionnaire
was indeed an effective measuring tool. And the two crucial aspects were verified,
reliability and validity. Reliability refers to how consistently a measurement tool assesses what
it's supposed to measure. Think of a bathroom scale. If you step on it multiple times and
get wildly different readings, you wouldn't trust it, right? Similarly, for a questionnaire,
we want to know if its questions consistently work together to measure the same thing.
And this Japanese version showed a very strong value of 0.93 on something called the Cronbach's
alpha coefficient. This coefficient ranges from 0 to 1 with values closer to 1, indicating
higher reliability. 0.93 means that the individual questions within the Japanese
are highly consistent and work together effectively to measure music performance anxiety,
confirming its high reliability. Next, validity. This is about whether the tool truly measures
what it intends to measure. It's further divided into two types, construct validity and
音楽パフォーマンス不安の評価
criterion-related validity. Construct validity examines whether the questionnaire genuinely
measures the different aspects that make up music performance anxiety. The study used a statistical
method called exploratory factor analysis. This method helps discover hidden common patterns or
groups among many questions. For instance, it can reveal if a set of questions primarily measures
physically anxiety symptoms. The analysis showed that the factor structure of the Japanese
questionnaire was very similar to the original version. This means the Japanese version
accurately measures the same underlying concepts as the original questionnaire.
And next, criterion-related validity. This checks how well scores from the new questionnaire
correlate with scores from other already established and validated similar questionnaires.
It's like asking, does our new measuring type give similar results to other trusted measuring types?
The KMPA-IR Japanese version shows a strong correlation 0.67 with state trait anxiety
inventory, which measures general anxiety, and 0.75 with the performance anxiety questionnaire,
another tool for performance anxiety. These high correlation coefficients are strong evidence
that the Japanese version is appropriately measuring MPA and aligns well with the existing
anxiety measures. Through these rigorous validations, this Japanese version has been proven to be the
fastest standardized, reliable, and valid psychological tool for measuring MPA in Japanese musicians.
So this version marks a significant step forward for the Japanese music community,
音楽パフォーマンス不安の研究
and we can now expect more detailed research using this tool targeting musicians across various
instruments, musical genres, and experience levels. This will pave the way for developing effective
evidence-based strategies and interventions in music education and mental health support for
musicians. And so, what do you think? I hope this discovery changes your perspective on stage fright
and enhances your understanding of musicians' challenges. Again, just a quick announcement,
this episode is a part of Science Podcast Day, an event featuring March 3 Japanese language science
podcasts. You can find the Spotify playlist with all participating shows in the episode description.
Also, Nippon Broadcasting's show Tokyo Music Institute is out today. Both Japanese and English
versions are available. The English version was created with AI and is quite interesting,
so be sure to check it out. And this podcast is broadcasted daily on weekday morning in both
Japanese and English. I'd love for you to listen to the podcast and post your notes and thoughts
with the hashtag SciencePod. Tomorrow I'll be temporarily returning to Japan from London,
so I might only be able to broadcast this episode, I think. I think the next episode will be available
next week, so you can review the past episode or another podcast, my other podcasts on Scientalk or
Sciomania in Japanese, and check the description box. See you next time!
