The Lyric Focus Questionnaire (LFQ): Measuring Individual Differences in Song Listening

Recent years have seen a significant increase in the use of songs, which contain an integrated music/language signal, as experimental stimuli. This has created a need for standardized tools to measure individual differences in song perception. The current article reports the development of the Lyric Focus Questionnaire (LFQ), which measures the degree to which a song listener’s cognitive resources are oriented towards the lyrics versus the other musical features (i.e., pitch, rhythm, timbre). In Study 1, we used exploratory factor analysis to reduce 121 candidate items down to 12 items for the LFQ. In Study 2, we used confirmatory factor analysis and internal consistency measures to ascertain the unidimensional structure of the LFQ. In Studies 3 and 4, we demonstrated that the LFQ is correlated to comprehension of lyrics but not to the ability to exactly recall lyrics. In Study 5, we aggregated data from the first four studies to create initial norms for the Lyric Focus Questionnaire and to explore discriminant validity between Lyric Focus and musical and literary activities with more statistical power than in each study alone. The LFQ is presented as a practical, valid, and reliable tool for researchers interested in the relation between music and language.