Many students listen to music while studying, but some educators believe that the tempo of background music can influence concentration. A team of researchers decided to investigate whether the tempo of background music affects students' reading comprehension performance.
An opportunity sample of twenty-two undergraduate students at a local university took part in the experiment. There were 14 females and 8 males aged 18–21 years. The participants were randomly assigned to either the 'fast-tempo' music condition or the 'slow-tempo' music condition, with 11 participants in each condition.
In the 'fast-tempo' condition, 11 participants were seated in a quiet laboratory cubicle. They wore headphones and listened to fast-tempo upbeat instrumental music (140 BPM) while reading a 2-page article on cognitive psychology for 10 minutes. At the end of the 10 minutes, the music was paused, and they individually completed a 12-question multiple-choice comprehension test about the article.
In the 'slow-tempo' condition, 11 participants followed the exact same procedure in an identical cubicle, but listened to slow-tempo ambient instrumental music (60 BPM) instead. They completed the same multiple-choice test.
Before starting, the researchers told the participants that the study was investigating individual learning speeds, withholding the focus on music tempo to reduce demand characteristics. All participants were fully debriefed at the end of their session.
The multiple-choice comprehension tests were scored out of 12. The descriptive statistics for each condition were:
Name an appropriate non-parametric test that the researchers could have used to analyse the data.
121 exam-style questions on AQA A Level Psychology Inferential testing (A-level only). Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.