An assessment of parental beliefs regarding the perceived and desired outcomes of high school choral music

This study examined the effects of parents\u27 gender, educational background and choral participation on their beliefs regarding the perceived and desired outcomes of high school choral music experiences. The subjects, 590 parents of high school students currently participating in a high school concert choir experience, were drawn from eight Nebraska school districts which represented all six of the Nebraska School Activities Association enrollment classifications. The parents were surveyed via a questionnaire designed by the researcher (the Perceived Values of Choral Music (PVCM)) and responded to twenty-four potential outcomes of the high school choral music experience. Each outcome required two responses: Part A of the questionnaire asked if a given potential outcome Is Learned ; Part B asked if this same potential outcome Should Be Learned through participation in high school choral music. The effects of the independent variables of parent gender, educational background and choral participation were analyzed using two-way ANOVAS with repeated measures on the belief factors (Is Learned; Should Be Learned) at the.05 level of confidence. The results indicated that the parents Agree that extra-musical skill acquisition Is Learned and Should Be Learned through participation in a high school choral music experience. Analyses of variance indicated educational background produced no significant differences in PVCM means. With regard to gender, responses of female parents were statistically significantly higher than the male parent responses at the.05 level of confidence. Parents\u27 years of participation did not make a significant difference in their responses. However, as the result of a second-order interaction, two separate one-way ANOVAs were used as follow-up procedures. Results of the one-way ANOVAs showed that no significant differences existed between the two choral participation groups at the.05 level of confidence when the questionnaire Part A (Is Learned) responses were used as the dependent measure. However, the Part B (Should Be Learned) responses for the choral participation groups were significantly different