Music And Studying

Chapter 1 Assignment

Will 100 students who study with classical background music score higher on an exam than another 100 students who study in silence?

I�m seeking to establish a cause and effect (experimental design).

The independent variable is the music. The dependent variable is the score the students receive on the exam.

The 100 students who study with music will score higher on an exam the other 100 students who study without music.

My population is college students ages 19-22. I will have an experimental group that will listen to the background music as they study, and I will have a control group who will study in silence.

I�m going to run an experiment by letting the students study, then testing their knowledge.

In 10 groups of 10 students, give each student the same passage of test to read over and study for 20 minutes. Once the text has been passed out, turn on a CD of classical orchestra music. Let the music play for the entire 20 minutes of study time. When the 20 minutes has expired, stop the music and re-collect the text. With an exam covering the material in the passage, test the students and record their scores immediately following the 20 minutes.

For the second group of 100 students tested, repeat the entire process omitting playing the classical music for the duration of the 20 minutes. This group of students is to study in silence. Test these students in the same manner and record their scores.

The results to this experiment will show that the 100 students that studied with music playing will have scored on average 40% higher than those students who studied with no music. My results support my hypothesis.