Continuous versus summative evaluations of musical intensity: A comparison of two methods for measuring overall effect

The primary purpose of the present study was to compare two different methods of measuring subjects\u27 perceptions of overall effect: (1) a record of subjects\u27 ongoing evaluation that is averaged to obtain an overall rating (labeled continuous ) and (2) a single rating of intensity given by subjects at the conclusion of a music excerpt (labeled summative ). Subjects were asked to evaluate the level of musical intensity expressed in various music excerpts. We used the term musical intensity as it is commonly understood, that is, to describe an affective perception of music that conveys strong, ardent, or concentrated emotion. Our use of the term does not refer to its physical/acoustical definition. The results illustrate the nonequivalence of subjects\u27 perceptions of overall intensity and mathematical summaries of their perceptions of intensity as recorded while listening. The two different measurement methods evidence extremely high levels of internal consistency; however, in both between- and within-subject comparisons, the summative responses were higher than the continuous response means. It seems reasonable to conclude that subjects\u27 expressions of overall effect are quite consistent between subjects and between replications, but that arithmetic means of subject responses are not equivalent to subjects\u27 psychological averages (i.e., their post hoc perceptions of overall effect), especially with regard to stimuli whose intensity levels change over the course of a given stimulus example. © 1997 by Music Educators National Conference