Idea 1: How does music affect teenagers’ (aged 16-18) mental health?
If I choose this idea, I would be interested to find out both how and when music can affect teenagers around the ages of 16-18 and their mental health. This research could be used by colleges to adapt their course to improve the mental health of their students by playing music in the background. If the college were able to increase the mental health of students on their courses this may lead to more students staying on the course meaning that they would have a higher chance of being able to become employed after they leave education. This may then affect the amount of productivity positively meaning that the country’s GDP may increase as the teenagers’ better mental state allows them to become more able to make decisions for themselves without their mental health stopping them.
If I chose to research this question I would be able to find people to collect data from for primary research. This data may not be very reliable because of the way that a majority of people that data would be collected from would be from the same area meaning that this may not be as accurate as if the data was collected from across the country. Also, many other aspects such as diet or friendships may influence the research too much for this to provide any reliable results as those aspects may have the same impact – if not a bigger impact on the research project.
Idea 2: Does music affect 16-18 year old concentration?
This question would focus on how varying genres of music can affect teenagers around the ages of 16-18 and their concentration on written college work. For instance, rock music may distract the 16-18 year olds from their work rather than being able to be distracted by anything else.
This may help 16-18 year olds find out whether listening to music does actually improve their concentration, meaning that they are able to become more focused, their college grades could become better and lead to better productivity, meaning that they may be able to carry more responsibilities as they are able to cope with a higher workload. This would help as they would find more employment rather than not being accepted for a job.
The practicality of finding out the results could potentially be easier than the other research projects. This is because of the way that I would be able to use the music rooms at college to ask people how they feel their concentration is, this is a subjective way of finding out about whether the students concentrate better with music or not and then I could ask them to do a memory game. This would then give results to explain whether the students really are able to concentrate or not.
Idea 3: Does people’s mood change depending on the type of music they listen to?
This could make more people aware of how they are controlled by how they are feeling when selecting music to listen to and could maybe include more positive music if they do not feel that they are in a positive mood. This could also mean that the music could affect their future music choice as the person's mood changes to fit with the music. This would then make sure that they can track their mood depending on their playlists. This could allow them to become more aware of how they are feeling rather than thinking that they were not as good as they really are.
This could also give an understanding on how businesses might want to monitor the type of music being played in the workplace as the employers may want to have their employees in the best mood possible as this would get the most productivity out of the employees and the company.
Project Focus
The focus of the research project is the question, “Does music affect 16-18 year olds’ concentration?” This is because of the way that the practicality of collecting the results is easier to research than the other two questions. This is because of the way that the music could be put on in a college with the same students for the same lesson, limiting the number of variables that could affect the results of the research project. This could lead to more accurate results.
However, concentration can be subjective depending on what the students are doing within their lessons. This may make it more difficult to judge the level of concentration of the students. One way the variable could be controlled is by conducting the research in the lesson where the students have written work and play music in that lesson instead. This makes sure that the number of variables is limited, meaning that the results could be more accurate.
As this research is about whether students would have more concentration on their work, they will be able to listen to a genre of their choice. I have noticed that my own concentration is better when listening to music because it helps me block out any other noise that would distract me, such as the teacher talking to someone nearby or someone talking about a subject that I am interested in. I am interested to see how this is with other students in the 16-18 age range and as I have access to a college with students around the ages of 16-18, I would be able to find out. This would mean that workplaces may be able to work out how much the workers are able to concentrate on different tasks depending on the music they are listening to.
The level of concentration is key when setting up equipment for a live performance. This is because, when connecting the system together, one needs to make sure that everything is plugged into the correct input/output. As live sound is the career I am looking to enter, this would enable me to understand whether 16-18 year olds concentrate better with music. This is important because I may be working with that age group when I am at venues.
Method
The method I am going to use for the research will include both primary and secondary research. This is because the primary research will only be able to give results for students on the course that I will pick for the research project, unlike secondary research which will allow me to find out what other people across the country are finding out in their research tasks they are following. This is because of the way that some other people may have access to more students meaning that the average would be more accurate to the country than the primary research technique will allow me to do.
Another reason I am including secondary research into this project is because of the way that I would be able to include an explanation about why the results that will be gathered are what they will be. This is because many people have researched this question before, meaning that there will be enough explanation. Even though secondary research is an easy way to find out about certain aspects of the research task, there are many sources of incorrect information and information that is outdated meaning I would have to find information from multiple sources to confirm that the data collected from those sources are correct. Another reason that I would want to have multiple sources of information is because they may provide some of the phycological reasons for why music does/does not students concentrate on the work they are doing.
The qualitative research that will be collected from the primary research will be the age group, the amount of people in each age group and the total amount of people in the. Meanwhile, the qualitative results will be the outcome of the concentration research task. The data collected may give a clearer understanding of how students around the ages of 16-18 concentrate. This is because of the way that the process will naturally generate those data types. The data collected from the primary research can then be used to collect other results and data from secondary research that have been carried out. Secondary research will contain both qua and qualitative data which will need to be understood in the same way that the same types of data are understood from the primary research. This is so that anyone who looks at the research project can understand the data collected in the process of the game.
Research Plan
The investigation will include 16-18 year old students from Dudley College for primary research. Meanwhile, for secondary research I shall use other university, colleges and published articles for the secondary research as they are most likely to have collected reliable results for this type of research, therefore making the collection of the data simpler, more straight forward and more accurate to find the data meaning that I would be able to have more accurate results.
Research Schedule
Date Task To Complete Reason Completed
06/11/2018 Collecting secondary research This should be an easy and simple task of finding out examples of secondary research.
13/11/2018 Preparation for collecting primary research This is so that the sufficient amount of resources are available for the primary research. This may include printing, finding any material to use in the research.
20/11/2018 Primary research This is to carry out the primary research to give enough time to condense and compare the results to secondary research.
27/11/2018 Condense results and create first draft This is where the results need to be condensed and written up in the first draft.
11/12/2018 Deadline for results to be compared and evaluated This is so that there is enough time to evaluate the results and the project as a whole. And a second draft should show this.
18/12/2018 First submission date This is where the final document should be handed in for grading.
16/01/2018 Resubmission date This is when the resubmission should be handed in by.
I have planned this schedule so that I can collect the most amount of data possible while leaving enough time to condense the results into an easier way to understand them rather than being notes. I also allocated time to creating multiple drafts so that the information collected would be at its clearest as this is something that needs to be communicated as clearly as possible. Another reason I have allocated so much time to completing drafts is because I would like to make sure that only correct and accurate information is included in the research.