The development and application of a measurement tool for assessing children’s vocal performance

Research on the influence of text and neutral syllable on children’s vocal performance has shown inconsistent results. Furthermore, the influence of teaching songs starting with melody and words or with the melody sang in neutral syllable, adding the words later, has not been addressed in depth. The purpose of this study was to develop two valid and reliable rating scales to assess children’s vocal achievement in two songs presented in both manners. These rating scales comprised two dimensions (tonal and rhythm) with five criteria each. Children aged 4 to 10 (N = 135) attending regular music classes in a city private school were individually audio recorded in two moments: (a) after an instruction phase of four weeks singing song A with neutral syllable and song B with text; and (b) three weeks later singing song A with the text presented over this period and song B again with text. Three judges rated children’s performances after being provided with samples of good, average, and poor performances on each dimension and having discussed the application of each criterion. Content and construct validity were assured by both authors according to a Music Learning Theory based-curriculum. Item analysis revealed that all items from difficulty and discrimination indices were within an acceptable range in both moments for both songs. Inter-rater reliabilities were high, ranging from ICC(2, k) = .878 to .951. Results are discussed in terms of the use of rating scales to investigate progression on children’s performance depending on the song-teaching strategy.