A study of performance anxiety in classical woodwind students at College of Music, Mahidol University

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to study performance anxiety in classical woodwind students at College of Music, Mahidol University. This consists: 1) the factors influencing performance anxiety, 2) how students cope with performance anxiety problem, 3) the level of performance anxiety in classical woodwind categorized by gender, educational level, and instruments. This research used a mixed- method research approach where interviews were qualified and analyzed in order to create a quantitative questionnaire in which descriptive statistics (frequency and percentages) and One-Way ANOVA were used to analyze the data and describe the research findings. The results of the study indicate that the most significant factor that influenced performance anxiety is performance environment (69.5%), followed by the artistic integrity and technical difficulties (50.9%), (both have the same frequency,) and personality (42.4%), and family tension (18.6%). The results of this study suggested the solutions for performance anxiety are: taking a deep breath, staying in a quiet environment, psychological analysis, practice, memorizing the score, eating, drinking something, or taking drugs to reduce anxiety. In addition, the results showed that females have a higher level of performance anxiety than males, and performance anxiety for the bassoon was higher than for the saxophone, and there were significant differences among different educational levels in all items.