The Impact of Music on Studying Ability in College Students

This study investigates the relationship between listening to music and studying ability in college students. This study was conducted by utilizing a convenience sampling technique to have participants partake in the study. Each participant was randomly assigned to either a control or one of two experimental groups based on block-random assignment. The individuals in the first research group listened to a brief segment of a hit song while studying a list of uncommon words and definitions before being tested on their ability to recall this information. The individuals in the second research group listened to a brief segment of the instrumental version of the same hit song as the first research group while studying the same list of words and definitions before being tested. The individuals in the control group studied the same list of uncommon words and definitions without the music stimulus and were then tested on their ability to recall the information. The data for each participant was kept anonymous as it was analyzed. Each participant was a student at a small, midwestern university. The null hypothesis for this study is that there is no relationship between listening to either lyrical or instrumental music and studying ability. Following a statistical analysis, I fail to reject the null hypothesis as there was not a significant difference in the posttest scores for the participants in each group. Due to the convenience sampling technique utilized, the results cannot be generalized to a larger population. Further research needs to be performed to determine if there is a relationship between listening to both lyrical and instrumental music and effective studying ability in college students