How Ones Personal Music History Affects Their Usage of Music When Studying

Olivia Kang

Texas A&M University

How Ones Personal Music History Affects Their Usage of Music When Studying

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

information that is provided by the data.

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

understand the data.

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

participants sometimes prefer listening to background noise (M = 3.08, SD = 1.41). This

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

ever so slightly negatively skewed.

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

with Texas A&Ms current demographics.