Pianists as an example for performance anxiety peculiar to musicians

Most musicians may experience anxiety during a performance. A high level of anxiety could have a negative impact on the performance of a musician on stage. Furthermore, it could reach to a point where the musician would prefer to quit his/her job. In most countries, many scales were developed to measure the level of music performance anxiety, however there is a lack of a Turkish scale on this topic. The aim of the present study is adapting Music Performance Anxiety Inventory for Adolescents into Turkish and investigate the validity and reliability of MPAI-A developed by M. S. Osborne and D. T. Kenny in 2005 in piano students and control groups.This study was carried out in 109 subjects consisting of 72 piano students and a control group of 37 individuals. All subjects included in the study were given a sociodemographic form, Music Performance Anxiety Inventory for Adolescents (MPAI-A), State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS).The validity analysis revealed that the scale differentiates the piano students from the control group. Turkish version of MPAI showed strong and statistically significant correlations with the total score of LSAS and also the scores of social anxiety and avoidance subscales of LSAS. It was also found that MPAI has a high internal consistency (Cronbach ? coefficent= 0.78), which means that all items in the inventory are compatible and complementary internally as a part of the scale.According to the results of present study, Turkish version of MPAI-A showed to be a valid and a reliable scale.