The purpose of this study was to describe the percentage of middle and high school male choral students in the United States, report the opinions of middle and high school chorus teachers on male enrollment and recruitment issues, and examine the relationship between enrollment data and selected variables. Data were collected through an online questionnaire from a random sample of middle and high school chorus teachers (N = 575) who were members of MENC: The National Association of Music Education.

Consistent with previous research, the present study found the average percentage of males enrolled in middle and high school chorus to be 26.85% (SD = 10.67) or a female to male ratio of slightly less than 3:1. This finding suggests that rate of male chorus participation has remained relatively stable for the past two decades. Multi-way analyses of variance were conducted to examine main and interaction effects between the dependent variable (percentage of male choral enrollment) and 10 independent variables. Of the independent variables (teacher gender, age, experience, educational attainment level, programs repertoire specifically for recruiting and retaining males, teaching level, school type, size of school enrollment, type of school community, majority ethnicity of chorus students), only school type demonstrated a statistically significant main effect, F (1, 530) = 14.569, p = .000; however, the effect size was very small (η² = .003) and the possibility of a Type I error could not be eliminated. Ultimately, the findings suggest no single factor affects middle and high school male choral participation.

Attitude and opinion responses indicated a desire for an increase in male choral enrollment and a belief that feeder school teachers should recruit and retain males. Participants ranked “friends in chorus” as the primary reason (41.4%) males participate in chorus and “not enough room in schedule” (30.7%), followed by “being made fun of” (28.8%) as the primary reasons males do not. Suggestions to increase male choral participation included more male role models, positive media endorsement, and beginning male singing at a young age. Implications for music educators include the need to address the issue of male harassment and homophobic labeling.