Chinese Primary School Students’ Singing Behaviour by Age, Sex and Socio-economic Status

Limited studies have paid attention to describing Chinese Primary school students’ singing behaviour. Consequently, to understand Chinese Primary school students’ singing behaviour, singing performances were collected from N = 1,193 children aged from 6+ to 11+, drawn from six schools in Hunan Province, China. All participants sang three songs: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Donkey (a Chinese nursery song), and Happy Birthday , with vocal products analysed against two existing rating scales: the Singing Voice Development Measure ( SVDM ) scale and the Vocal Pitch-Matching Development (VPMD ) scale. Older participants and girls tended to have more developed singing behaviour than younger participants and boys. Urban children and children from higher-income families tended to show better singing behaviour. However, the differences by sex, geographic location and income were reduced for the oldest participants. The study might help future and current music teachers who are teaching the music curriculum in Primary schools in China to understand the likely development of Primary school students’ singing behaviour across different age groups, sex and socio-economic statuses, in order to support development in a more nuanced way which is differentiated by likely need.