The Vienna Art Interest and Art Knowledge Questionnaire (VAIAK): A Unified and Validated Measure of Art Interest and Art Knowledge

Being interested in art and having knowledge about art are arguably central dimensions in art experience and two of the most important individual differences when assessing how people process or respond to art. Nonetheless, there is to date no reliable and validated measure of these dimensions. In this paper, we present the Vienna Art Interest & Art Knowledge Questionnaire (VAIAK) as a tool for researchers to measure both art interest and knowledge of their participants in studies involving visual art. In a 3-stage validation process, we first developed the questionnaire. Second, we pretested it qualitatively and quantitatively with a sample of lay people as well as art history students and art professionals. Finally, we conducted a large-scale validation study (600 participants) with both lay people (psychology students) and art history students, where we present evidence regarding relations to other variables and internal structure as well as the ability to discriminate between relative lay people and experts. Our results show evidence for the reliability of the VAIAK scores as well as evidence for the validity as a measure of both art interest and art knowledge in (scientific) research, while at the same time also providing important clarification and differentiation between the two dimensions. With this new questionnaire, we offer a tool for researchers in empirical aesthetics, creativity, and also applied fields to quantify one or both of the art interest and art knowledge dimensions.