The Voice Foundation 52nd Annual Symposium paper: The Musician’s Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (MAAQ): A New Tool for Measuring Psychological Flexibility as it relates to Music Performance Anxiety in Student and Professional Singers

Citation Zenobi, D., Juncos, D., Roman, J., & Osborne, M.S. (2023, 4 June). The Musician’s Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (MAAQ): A New Tool for Measuring Psychological Flexibility as it relates to Music Performance Anxiety in Student and Professional Singers. Paper presented at The Voice Foundation’s 52nd Annual Symposium: Care of the Professional Voice, 31 May – 4 June, 2023, Philadelphia, PA, USA. doi: 10.26188/23620695 Abstract Singers in all genres, and at all levels of study struggle with Music Performance Anxiety (MPA). MPA can manifest behaviorally as avoidance of auditions and other high-stakes performances, avoidance of practice, the inability to experience flow while practicing/performing, and it also correlates with maladaptive perfectionism. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a mindfulness and acceptance-based intervention, teaches that if singers remain “psychologically flexible” in the presence of MPA, we may cope with it more effectively. These findings are relevant to voice professionals because ACT coaching can ethically be administered within the lesson by voice teachers/vocal coaches to help singers cope better with MPA and related challenges. This study is the first to measure levels of psychological flexibility in both student and professional musicians. It tested a new musician-specific questionnaire, the Musician’s Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (MAAQ), adapted from the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire - Version II (AAQ-II). Students were recruited from an Australian conservatory and a School of Music within a private liberal arts university in the Midwestern United States. Professional participants included an international sample of musicians in all genres/instruments. Participants filled out the AAQII, the MAAQ, the Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (FMPS), the revised Kenny Music Performance Anxiety Inventory (KMPAI-R), short measures of flow within performance and practice (SDFS-2), and they answered questions about their performance and practice-related behaviors. The MAAQ was successfully constructed and showed good reliability and invariance of its factor structure and good convergent/divergent validity with established questionnaires. It outperformed the AAQ-II as a predictor of important outcomes in music performance and practice. In the student samples, the MAAQ better predicted avoidant behavior in one’s practice and in performances, flow states in practice and performances, and grades on a recent, adjudicated music exam. In the professional sample, the MAAQ better predicted performance-related avoidance and whether one competes in professional music competitions after completing their education. Despite the small samples, these results offer preliminary support for the MAAQ’s utility in measuring and predicting problematic behaviors associated with MPA.