Impact of musical training as a leisure activity on listening levels. Results of a programme with senior citizens

Abstract

The goal of this study consisted of analysing whether educational intervention by means of a Musical Training as a Leisure Activity programme had any significant impact on sensorial, affective and analytical listening levels among senior citizens who had and had not previously studied music. To do so, we designed our own measurement scale and applied it to a sample of 37 students over 50 years of age at the University of Deusto (Bilbao, Spain). Both the scale as a whole and each of the subscales of the different listening levels presented adequate reliability, with Cronbach's alpha values greater than 0.8. The questionnaire was administered in the classroom on the first and last day of class, after hearing the same piece of music. The measurements before and after the educational intervention were compared by applying a Student's t-test for paired samples. The research concluded that the only listening level to have been significantly affected by the Musical Training as a Leisure Activity programme was the analytical level, and when examining this in greater detail, it is noted that the impact was only prominent among members of the sample who had not studied music before.