Abstract
This study’s purpose was to compare performance evaluations given by musicians and nonmusicians to upper elementary choirs with either voluntary or compulsory participation. Subjects were undergraduate music majors (n = 32) and non-music majors (n = 24) enrolled in a music methods course or choral ensemble. Subjects rated three different elementary choirs using a 10-point Likert scale and wrote comments on the best and worst aspects of each selection. The independent variable was participation in each choir: Choir 1 was volun-tary, Choir 3 was compulsory, and Choir 2 was a mix of vol-untary and compulsory. Results showed no significant differ-ence between the three choirs’ ratings or between the ratings of majors vs. nonmajors. All written comments of majors and nonmajors for best aspect were significantly different (p < .05). Written comments pertaining only to musical character-istics were significantly different for best aspect (p < .01) and worst aspect (p < .05).