Development and validation of the individual and social music listening scale (ISMUS-LI)

Research shows that the presence or absence of other people can influence music listening. However, it is unknown to what extent listeners prefer to choose the social situation for their listening or their time alone. Notably, no psychometric tool exists to directly measure such preferences. The present study sought to develop a psychometric scale to address this issue. We report the full development process of the Individual and Social Music Listening Scale (ISMUS-LI), from item development and content validity (i.e., evaluation by experts) to scale development (Study 1; N = 197: Exploratory Factor Analysis), and evaluation (Study 2; N = 179: Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Exploratory Structural Equation Model, convergent and discriminant validity). Both studies show that, after data reduction, two independent factors emerged, labelled as “Individual” and “Social”, measured by nine items each. In addition, a set of internal and external validity measures confirms the high quality of the scale in terms of its psychometric properties. Lastly, a reliable 9-item brief version of the scale (ISMUS-LI-B) was developed by resorting to Yarkoni's (2010) Genetic Algorithm. • ISMUS-LI was developed: a scale for Individual and Social Music Listening preferences • Two independent subscales (Individual, Social) showed sound psychometric properties • ISMUS-LI-B, a 9-item brief version, showed similar validity and properties • Individual Music Listening score (ML) was higher than Social, with large effect sizes • Extraversion led to higher Social and lower Individual ML; Neuroticism to higher Individual ML