Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Olivia Kang
Introduction
This study focused on how ones personal history with music affects their usage of music
when studying. To achieve this, we used descriptive statistics. The purpose of exploring
descriptive statistics and frequencies as a first step of any data analysis is very crucial because
they are the tools that help people to discover and interpret data. They help to understand the
There are two types of descriptive statistics: central tendency and variability. Central
tendency shows us the mean, median, and mode which tells us the typical score. Variability
shows us the standard deviation, variance, and range which tells us how different the scores are.
Both types of descriptive statistics help to understand what happens in the study because central
tendency organizes and describes the nature of the data while variability helps people to
Our groups goal is to study and find out how ones personal music history affects their
usage of music when studying. We will use measures of central tendency such as mean and
median and measures of variability such as range and standard deviation to find if a rich history
involved with music has a different effect on music usage than a history without music
involvement.
Method
For our study, we created an online survey and surveyed a sample of twenty-six students
around the Texas A&M University campus. We surveyed close-to even numbers of male and
female participants (Male n=10, Female n=16). When asked how many years they were involved
in a music/organization prior to college, we found that 3.85% had zero involvement, 23.08% had
one years worth, 19.23% had two years, four 15.38% had three years, 15.38% had four years,
How Ones Personal Music History Affects Their Usage of Music When Studying
11.54% had five years, 3.85% had six years, 3.58% had seven years, and 3.85% had eighteen
years of involvement.
When surveying the participants, the variables asked were How much do you prefer to
listen to classical music when studying?, How much do you prefer not to listen to anything
when studying?, How much do you prefer to listen to background noise when studying?, and
How much do you prefer to listen to other music genres?. The participants would then answer
each variable on an interval scale from 1 to 5, 1 meaning never, 2 meaning rarely, 3 meaning
sometimes, 4 meaning often, and 5 meaning always. For example, a response of a 5 in reference
to classical music would indicate that the participant always listens to classical music while
studying.
Results
After all participants submitted their answers, the responses were compiled and analyzed
through SPSS. Overall, participants very rarely listen to classical music when studying (M =
2.35, SD = 1.30). The histogram for this variable shows that the curve is a bit positively skewed
most likely due to the fact that not many people know that classical music is good for studying. It
may be that lower experience with music organizations is associated to lower usage of classical
music while studying. Also, the average of the participants state that not listening to anything
happens very rarely (M = 2.46, SD = 1.27). The histogram for this variable is also positively
skewed. This could be because music serves as a motivator/relaxer when studying nowadays, so
it would be very rare for one to never listen to music while studying. On the other hand, many
variables histogram is platykurtic. This shows that there is a good variety of preferences for
simply listening to back ground noise. For the last variable, participants state that they sometimes
How Ones Personal Music History Affects Their Usage of Music When Studying
listen to other genres that werent stated in the other variables (M = 3.12, SD = 1.24). The
histogram for this variable has the shape of a nearly symmetrical bell curve, and if anything, is
Discussion
From this study, the results were that the participants, on average, rarely listened to
classical or nothing at all and only sometimes preferred to listen to background noise or another
genre of music that is not classical. From these results, it is possible to conclude that some form
of more modern noise, whether it be mainstream and alternative music or the chattering of
people, is preferred by students nowadays. It can also be concluded that the more years involved
with a music-related organization, the more likely the participant is to listen to classical music
when studying.
For this data set, mean was most likely the best method that described the data. Although
some of the data were slightly skewed, there were not any extreme scores that would completely
throw off the mean. One response pattern that was unexpected was that the How much do you
prefer to listen to other music genres? question did not nearly receive a lot of 4s and 5s while
none of the other variables were very strong in their 4 and 5 responses either. This brings the
question of what do people actually listen to when they study if the average person reported that
they only sometimes listen to other genres of music while they also rarely listened to nothing or
classical music.
As big as the sample was, the sample is not quite representative of the population because
there was a higher proportion of female participants in our sample than expected from the
population. However, regarding ethnicity, majority of the sample were White which lines up