The Development and Validation of the Arts Self-Perception Inventory for Adults

Abstract

The purpose of this investigation was to develop and validate an adult form of the Arts Self-Perception Inventory (ASPI), a multidimensional self-concept inventory designed to measure perceptions of skill in music, visual art, dance, and dramatic art. Data from two independent samples of college students (ns = 175 and 258) strongly supported the construct validity of the ASPI (adult form) by showing that its subscale reliabilities were uniformly high (ax > .95), that its hypothesized internal structure was clearly defined in both conventional and confirmatory factor analyses, that its factor structure was highly consistent across validation and cross-validation samples, and that its subscale scores formed logically consistent patterns of relationships with a wide variety of external criterion measures. Possible uses of the instrument are discussed.