Emotions and Music — an academic survey in search of participants!

Edited: November 27, 2025, 1:27 PM · Dear all,

first of: this thread has been greenlit by Laurie in advance — I'd like to express my gratitude once more for being allowed to 'advertise' my scientific survey here!

Some of you might remember me ever so faintly, as I stepped out of the lurking shadows and participated in a discussion or two back in 2020, but vanished once again, busy with finishing my master's as a violinist. Well, this time, I'm back working on yet another one of those so-called master's degrees, but this time as a musicologist!
Having witnessed many (and participated in a select few) wonderful discussions on this website, I was certain that I'd find a diverse and open-minded selection of practicing musicians (of all levels and degrees of professionalisation) here, which is exactly what I'm looking for.
So, without further ado, I'd like to kindly ask for your help in advancing musicological research concerned with, perhaps, one of the most complex and elusive concepts in music: emotions.

I would like to invite you to participate in a survey investigating *Inhibited Emotional Self-Awareness and Musical Performance* as part of my master’s research conducted in the musicology division of the Institute for Theater Studies of the Freie Universität Berlin.

The purpose of this research study is to shine a light on classical musicians with self-assessed alexithymia — (partial) lack of or trouble verbalising emotions — in their reconciliation with the significant societal assumption of emotiveness in music performance. We are seeking participants who will evaluate their experience of music in the following questionnaire to further research this phenomenon.

The questionnaire consists of a number of questions (without any additional media samples), is available fully in both, English and German, and takes approximately 15 minutes to complete.

Being 18 or over is a necessary condition for participation; practical musical experience — regardless whether professional or as an ‚amateur‘ — is not strictly necessary, but of great relevance. Forwarding this survey to potential participants in your personal circles is greatly appreciated!

At a later point, we would like to conduct follow-up conversations with some of the participants; providing your contact information, however, is explicitly optional, and a fully anonymous participation in the survey the default option. Additional information on the research question, the data protection, as well as the further course of this research can be found in the introduction. I'd like to reiterate for clarity that all data is anonymously secured on GDPR-compliant servers provided by the EU until it is downloaded and securely stored on German GDPR-compliant servers provided by the Freie Universität Berlin. As you might know, Europeans, and particularly Germans, are rather serious about their privacy and digital footprints, so that it is of special importance to us to act responsibly and be respectful of our participants' private information.

The survey can be accessed via the following link (the language can be chosen on the first page if necessary):

https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/alexithymia-and-music

Thank you very much for your attention, and, perhaps, participation!
Should any further questions arise, you are more than welcome to contact me via benjamin.skorov(at)fu-berlin.de; should your questions be general enough not to warrant anonymity, you are more than welcome to pose them here, too, and I will make sure to answer them right away.

Kind regards
Benjamin

Replies (13)

Steve Jones

November 27, 2025, 5:32 AM · That seems like an interesting and carefully compiled questionnaire. Good luck!

Benjamin Skorov

November 27, 2025, 6:06 AM · Thanks a lot, Steve! Without giving away too much in advance, the survey has been carefully compiled from a number of tried and tested questionnaires to cover several initially unrelated psychological spheres. Given that my background is in musicology rather than psychology, it was very important for us to be able to rely on existing systems and reference the body of work once it's time to evaluate the results.

Nickie McNichols

November 27, 2025, 8:00 AM · Benjamin, I would be interested in taking a look at this, if I had a link I can open.

Benjamin Skorov

Edited: November 27, 2025, 11:00 AM · Nickie, unfortunately I'm not actually sure about the technology powering this forum, so it'll be a shot in the dark, but I hope that the link will be click-able if I post it like this: https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/alexithymia-and-music

Paul Deck

November 27, 2025, 9:09 AM · Your link works for me. Somehow this thread prompted me to learn how to upgrade my HTML so that links that I include on v.com open in a new tab. I'm going to try that from now on. After the URL in the "a" tag, include the following: target="_blank"

So your code would read: [a href="URL" target="_blank"]link text[/a]

Where the square brackets are replaced by the customary angle brackets found in HTML code.

Benjamin Skorov

November 27, 2025, 11:01 AM · Thanks for the tip, Paul, I've edited my posts accordingly!

Mengwei Shen

November 27, 2025, 1:07 PM · In the original post, there is an extra break tag (br) as part of the link, making it go to an error page. The link in the comment works.

I personally "middle click" (when using a mouse), or right click and select open link in new tab, as a matter of habit. On a rare occasion, I want to regular-click a link and have it open in the same tab or window. It's a slight annoyance when the link doesn't behave as expected because you can't see what the site owner has configured, but it's also easy enough to just close it when done.

Benjamin Skorov

November 27, 2025, 1:30 PM · In German, we have a word for what I've done here: verschlimmbessern, to 'worsebetter', which is when you have good intentions but make something worse than it was to begin with. In that sense: thank you very much for your attentive comment; it should hopefully be fixed now!

Richard Pairaudeau

November 28, 2025, 6:13 AM · The link opened just fine for me. We'll all look forward to your results and conclusions when you post them, Benjamin, in the fullness of time. Meanwhile, happy fiddling!

Benjamin Skorov

November 28, 2025, 9:32 AM · Thank you, Richard! As I've said to Laurie before creating this thread, I cannot promise that I'I break the
news on this website, so to say, as it all depends on whether the results go on to be published in any
capacity. But rest assured that I will not forget about it either, and will most definitely keep you up-to-date once I'm free to do so!

Richard Pairaudeau

November 28, 2025, 11:21 AM · That's great Benjamin! Best wishes!

Nickie McNichols

November 28, 2025, 6:36 PM · Benjamin the link worked fine.

Benjamin Skorov

November 29, 2025, 7:28 AM · Glad to hear that, Nickie!