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Stress in Students?
Psychology Major Project
Brittany Mitchell
PSYC1100 03
Introductory Psychology
November 5th, 2014
Table of Contents
Research Question & Hypothesis............................3
Research Study Design.....4,5
Results & Discussion...6
Reference Page...7
Self-Evaluation.8
Rubric....9
Research Data & Observations..10
Introduction
Being a student leads to high levels of stress and a common question is how can we
cope with it? Being avid music listener I tend to listen to it any chance I get, in-between
classes, during huge homework/study sessions, and after an extremely stressful day.
Something I always wondered is does it actually help? It has been proven that things like
drinking and smoking are not the best stress relieving methods but what about music?
After a stressful day can listening to music actually reduce someones stress levels or
make it worse? This is what I decided to base my project on.
Specifics:
Independent Variable
Music
Dependent Variable
Stress
Experimental Group
Students
Confounding Variable(s)
Age
Gender
Music Genre(s)
Amount of stress in each student
Method:
For this experiment it was important to get a hold of a few students in different courses,
and with different stress levels. I decided I would get the best results if the students got
to self-select the music (choices would be decided on a date prior to the experiment).
After getting all the details in order, the plan was to get each student to sit down after a
stressful time (eg. Test, project) and get them to listen to their self-selected music. They
would be told to close their eyes and play the music, during this time, I can observe their
body language to try and get further support for my hypothesis. After five minutes, they
would be told to stop the music and be asked a series of questions about the
experience.
Questions:
How do you feel?
Do you feel as though your stress has been reduced? Yes or No?
Do you think the music you chose was a good choice to reduce stress? If said no,
ask, what genre would be better suited.
Do you usually listen to music to reduce stress? Yes or No?
Would you use listening to music to be cope with stress again? Yes or No?
Ethics:
My experiment does not violate any of the of the human ethics laws, the students in the
experiment would be well informed about what would happen and would not be in any
type of harm.
I have many limitations to my study, the most important one was not having enough
participates in my study. That being my own fault for not planning ahead but if I had
more people I definitely had better result and my hypothesis could have been wrong.
Another limitation would be only trying one kind of music genre, which was selfselected. If I had done more genres like in other studies I found in my research, I could
have had more in-depth results.
Reference Page
1. Labb, Elise, et al. "Coping With Stress: The Effectiveness of Different Types of Music." Applied
Psychophysiology & Biofeedback32.3/4 (2007): 163-168. SPORTDiscus with Full Text. Web. 4
Nov. 2014.
2. Kowalski, Kathiann M. "Coping with Stress." Current Health 2, a Weekly Reader publication Sept.
2000: 6. Academic OneFile. Web. 3 Nov. 2014.
3. "Stress Management. How to Reduce, Prevent, and Cope with Stress. Web. 3 Nov. 2014.
<http://www.helpguide.org/articles/stress/stress-management.htm>.
Name: __________________________________
Often
Seldom
Sometimes
Contributed ideas
Listened to and respected the ideas of others
Compromised and co-operated
Took initiative when needed
Worked outside of class if necessary
Spent time browsing for appropriate material
Did my share of the workload/tasks
1. ____________________________________________________________________________
2. ____________________________________________________________________________
1. ____________________________________________________________________________
2. ____________________________________________________________________________
Group Members Names (Clearly PRINTED & in ALPHABETICAL order by last name):
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Investigation/background research
/2
/1
Hypothesis stated
/1
Research design
Method identified
o If experimental: variables, groups
Method outlined
Ethical
/5
/2
/3
Discussion
limitations
References provided
/5
/1
Group/self-evaluations
TOTAL
/20