A nation-wide validation and application study of the Chinese Barcelona Musical Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ)

Abstract: Music is rewarding as it has the ability to evoke intense pleasure, regulate our mood, and foster social bonding. Unlike other rewards such as food or money, which are generally appealing to almost everyone, the sensitivity to musical rewards varies significantly among different populations. The Barcelona Musical Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ) is a concise 5-likert scale designed to measure individual differences in the sensitivity to musical rewards. It consists of four subscales: music seeking, sensory - motor, mood regulation, emotion evocation, and social reward, with each subscale containing four items. This questionnaire has been used globally and has been validated in European and American populations, as well as in the population of Changsha, Hunan Province, China. Given the extensive territorial expanse of China, the music culture varies substantially across different regions. As a result, it is rather partial to confine the samples within the scope of merely one province.Method and Results: In the present study, to validate the translation of the C - BMRQ, a total of 1,797 valid participants were recruited from across China. Initially, to translate the English version into Chinese, we selected three native Chinese translators proficient in English: an individual majoring in English, an undergraduate student in psychology under a bilingual education system, and a Ph.D. candidate in music psychology. They have in-depth knowledge of Chinese culture and possess test translation experience or expertise in the subject area of the scale, which facilitates the accurate translation of technical terms.A double-translation and reconciliation procedure was adopted. Two independent translators carried out forward translations from English to Chinese. Subsequently, an expert reviewed and reconciled the two versions. After that, a backward translation was conducted, and the original English version and the back-translated English version were compared to address discrepancies. Finally, bilingual translators provided feedback on equivalence and made comprehensive revisions to form the "Literally-translated version".An online questionnaire was distributed mainly to members of the participant groups in the Beijing area, with a total of 387 participants (156 males, 231 females, Mean Age (± SD) = 23.42 ± 3.54). Confirmatory factor analysis of the questionnaire results revealed that the loadings of some items were low (see Table 2 for details). The root cause was that certain scenarios were too restrictive in the Chinese context. For instance, "16. At a concert I feel connected to the performers and the audience." was initially translated as "在音乐会上，我会觉得我与演奏者及其他听众的心是相通的", because concerts are a highly specialized and infrequently-experienced form within Chinese music performances, which limits the generalizability of statements related to them. Therefore, "concert" was replaced with the more inclusive term "music performance", transforming the English item into "在音乐表演中，我会觉得我与表演者及其他观众的心是相通的 ("At a music performance, I feel a connection with the performers and other audience members"). Additionally, some expressions in the original English questionnaire, such as " I inform myself about music I like. " (initially translated as "我很明确的知道我喜欢哪些音乐"), were difficult to interpret clearly. Thus, it was revised to "我会主动寻找我喜欢的音乐来听 ("I will actively seek out the music I like to listen to") to better fit the music-seeking dimension. Moreover, overly intense frequency adverbs were toned down. For instance, "I'm always looking for new music." (我总是在寻找新音乐) was changed to "I often actively look for new music to listen to. " (我经常会主动寻找新的音乐来听).The comparison of the literally-translated and adjusted-translated versions was shown in Table 1.To explore the reliability and validity of the adjusted-translated version, we recruited two groups of people across China (sample 1: N = 391, 123 males, 268 females, Mean Age (± SD) = 22.46 ± 2.90; sample 2: N= 1019, 278 males, 741 females, Mean Age (± SD) = 22.31 ± 2.80), both of which showed good reliability (Table 2) and validity (Table 3). Using the sample 2, we further tested correlations with criterion measures (PAS and Gold-MSI). The total score of c-BMRQ was significantly and positively correlated with all sub-dimensions of Gold-MSI and GMS. These findings collectively underscore the high reliability and validity of the "adjusted-translated version", justifying its adoption as the definitive c-BMRQ.