ABSTRACT
155 of 650 professional musicians playing symphonic orchestras in The Netherlands completed a self-report questionnaire concerning performance anxiety. 91 of the 155 respondents reported experiencing or having experienced performance anxiety seriously enough to affect their professional or personal lives. There appeared to be no difference in prevalence between men and women. Substantial percentages of the anxious musicians reported considerable anticipation anxiety days (36%), weeks (10%), or even months (5%) prior to a performance. The results indicate that performance anxiety is a significant professional problem. It is suggested that teaching explicit coping strategies should be incorporated in the curricula of schools of music.
Subject(s)
Anxiety/psychology , Music , Occupational Diseases/psychology , Social Environment , Adaptation, Psychological , Adult , Anxiety/diagnosis , Female , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Netherlands , Occupational Diseases/diagnosisABSTRACT
Studies have shown that the mean scores on global subjective well-being measures of cancer patients do not differ from the mean scores of other patient samples or samples of healthy individuals. These results give rise to speculations about the nature of the concept subjective well-being. Therefore, we compared the structure of the concept subjective well-being between three groups of elderly women (cancer patients, women suffering from chronic ailments and healthy women). This was done by examining the relationships between five dimensions of subjective well-being (perceived physical health, self-esteem, negative affect, optimism and loneliness) and two measures of global subjective well-being (affective well-being and life satisfaction) in each group of women. The results clearly demonstrate the differences in the relative importance of the five dimensions for the global evaluation of well-being between the three groups. The most notable finding was that perceived physical health appears to be more strongly related to global subjective well-being, when the objective health status is worse. The unequal relative importance of dimensions of subjective well-being should be taken into account when comparing the mean scores on subjective well-being measures between populations with different states of health.
