LISTENING TO MUSIC AND MUSIC PREFERENCES IN EARLY ADOLESCENCE

Sa？etak Music plays an important role in the life of adolescents. Dealing with music represents a very important free-time activity during adolescence, while by listening to music or performing music adolescents can satisfy a range of needs, both personal and those of social nature. Therefore, this paper presents the results of research on musical taste and listening to music habits in early adolescence. We hypothesized that students generally like listening to music and that they mostly prefer domestic and foreign popular music. It was also assumed that older students, on average, listen to music more than younger students and that there is a significant relation between certain personality traits and preferences of certain musical styles. We used The Eysenck Personality Questionnaire for children together with an instrument designed for this study that consists of two questionnaires – Listening to Music Questionnaire and Musical Performers Preferences Questionnaire. The results showed that students generally like listening to music and that they usually listen to music one hour per day. As expected, students prefer popular music, especially domestic pop, pop-folk and foreign pop. Neuroticism was correlated with preferences of turbo-folk music, popular domestic and foreign rock music, while other relations with personality traits were not established. Younger students assessed more important role of music education in the formation of musical taste, therefore, we indicated implications for music lessons at an early school age