English and American Adolescents' Reasons for Listening to Music

Abstract

This study investigated the degree to which English and American adolescents report similar reasons for listening to music. A questionnaire was completed by 245 participants (mean age = 15 27 years), on which they indicated how much each of 11 potential reasons for listening to music applied to them. Factor analysis revealed three factors which accounted for 60.3% of the variance in responses. These factors were interpreted as listening to music for reasons of "selfactualisation", to "fulfil emotional needs", and to "fulfil social needs". Whilst analysis of the factor scores did reveal some individual differences between responses of participants in each culture, overall there were no significant multivariate or univariate main effects of nationality. This suggests that the English and American adolescents' reasons for listening to music may similarly be explained by the same factors.