Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Music & Emotion (ICME3), Jyväskylä, Finland, 11th - 15th June 2013. Geoff Luck & Olivier Brabant (Eds.) THE EMOTIONALITY OF SONIC EVENTS: TESTING THE GENEVA EMOTIONAL MUSIC SCALE (GEMS) FOR POPULAR AND ELECTROACOUSTIC MUSIC Athanasios Lykartsis, Andreas Pysiewicz, Henrik von Coler, Steffen Lepa Audio Communication Group, Technical University Berlin, Germany alykartsis@mailbox.tu-berlin.de Abstract In the present study the Geneva Emotional Music Scale (GEMS-25) and its German offshoot, the GEMS-28-G were tested for measurement invariance across different types of musical stimuli. Additionally, the compara- bility of scores across the different language versions was checked. While alternative scales are often based on general dimensional or categorical emotion theories and are thus "stimulus-neutral", the domain-specific lik- ert-type emotion scale GEMS is designed to especially capture the emotions evoked when listening to music. Within the study, an online survey was administered (n = 245) using a stimuli set of 20 excerpts from musical pieces. By analyzing the data with structural equation modeling (SEM), we tried to verify the reliability of the scales in terms of measurement invariance towards popular/classic music as well as towards the genre of elec- troacoustic music, employing the latter as an extreme case of a "non-conventional musical style". We subse- quently also tested for measurement invariance across languages. Concerning music styles, measurement invariance of the original GEMS-25 was achieved only at the "configural level", while the GEMS-28-G could reach at least "weak factorial invariance". This demonstrates that only for the German version the contextual meaning of the construct remains constant across different musical genres with a reasonable fit. Nevertheless, researchers should be cautious when comparing GEMS factor scores achieved with very heterogenic musical styles in future studies, regardless in which language. Keywords: emotion measurement, structural equation modeling, measurement invariance 1. Introduction The measurement of music-induced emotions is a growing field within music psychology, with a multitude of basic questions to be an- swered. A debate is still going on concerning the nature of the emotions related to music. Some claim that music does not evoke emo- tions as experienced in everyday situations, but that listeners respond affectively to music (Hunter & Schellenberg, 2010). Different approaches are available for measuring emotions in general, including the measurement of bodily functions, the use of real-time user responses or surveys based on self-reports (Desmet, 2003). The latter have a long tradition in the capturing of everyday sensations. Some authors express uncertainty that theories developed for non-music-related emotion measurement are adequate for use in music related questions and its aesthetic con- text (Vuoskoski & Eerola, 2011, p. 160). Alt- hough the two-dimensional circumplex model and the discrete emotion model have been extensively used (ibid.), the need for a music specific instrument describing more aesthet- ical contexts has become obvious (Zentner, Grandjean & Scherer, 2008). This is due to the fact that emotions related to the listening of music seem to differ from those we experience in everyday situations.