Assessing Psychological Flexibility with the Musician's Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (MAAQ)

CITATION

Juncos, D.G., Roman, J. B., Zenobi, D. & Osborne, M.S. (2022, 14-19 June). Assessing Psychological Flexibility with the Musician's Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (MAAQ). Poster presented at the Association for Contextual Behavior Science World Conference 2022, San Francisco, contextualscience.org/wc2022. https://doi.org/ 10.26188/20280318

ABSTRACT 

Performance anxiety, low motivation to practice, psychological distress, perfectionism, and having to endure adjudicated exams/auditions, are some of many stressors facing university musicians across the world. Existing research suggests that remaining psychologically flexible might enable students to cope more effectively with these challenges (Juncos et al., 2017). However, no specific measures of psychological flexibility (PF) exist for them yet, aside from general PF measures, i.e., AAQ-II (Bond et al., 2011). This study aimed to validate a self-report measure of PF for student musicians (Musician’s Acceptance and Action Questionnaire), and to determine its ability to predict outcomes of interest within their performances and practice, in particular, scores on an adjudicated music exam, avoidance of performances/practice, and a history of psychotherapy/medication due to music performance, e.g., treating performance anxiety. 

Two samples of university musicians were recruited from the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music (Nf64) and Butler University (Nf64). Students completed a pilot version of the MAAQ, along with measures of PF, music performance anxiety, perfectionism and flow. Demographic information about their training experiences were collected, and they were asked about a history of avoidance within their performances and practice. 

Results of analyses to determine the MAAQ's factor structure, internal consistency, and construct/discriminant validity will be reported. Also, the results of analyses to determine its incremental predictive validity when compared to the AAQ-II in predicting outcomes of interest for university musicians will be reported. 

The MAAQ's psychometric properties and overall ability to measure PF within music performance and practice settings will be discussed.