milestone four

Method

Participants

The participants will be 10 graduate students from the Southern New Hampshire University. The students will consist of those enrolled in the Psy-510 class of the psychology graduate program. These students will participate on a completely volunteer basis during a period of one week. They will be from places all over the United States, and could be any age, 18 and over.

Materials

For this study the materials being used will be a computer with internet access and the Qualtrics website, in which the survey will be created on and also taken on. Qualtrics is a company that helps anyone create and conduct research surveys for any topic. The website allows for easy survey making and also makes it easy for the participants to take your survey. These materials are appropriate for this study because it is based on a survey which each participant will take. The website is needed to create the survey as well as for the participants to compete the survey and collect the data. A computer with internet access is important for this study because without this the participants would not have access to the survey.

Procedures

The procedure used to collect the data needed is the survey. The survey will consist of a series of questions that will help determine the personality traits and music preferences of each of the participants. Each participant will answer the questions based on their personal beliefs and preferences. The surveys will be conducted though the Qualtrics website. This site will also collect the data given by the participants. The survey will be split into two sections, music preference and personality traits. The questions on music preference will consist of questions asking the participant to rate each type of music on a scale from 1-10 with 1 being least preferred and 10 being most preferred, as was done in the study “Music preferences and personality among Japanese university students.” The music types will be split into these different categories; Reggae, Country, Electronic, Hip Hop / Rap, Jazz, Pop, R&B, Rock, and Heavy Metal. The questions for personality traits will also be answered using a Likert scale. This scale will be a 1-5 scale where 1 is not at all and 5 is very much. The personality traits will be based off of the big 5 personality traits, openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. These procedures will address the research study because they will get the information needed from each participant that will help to prove my hypothesis.

Ethical Considerations

While there are no ethical issues that could result in any physical harm or damage to the participants, there may be some other types of ethical issues involved when collecting the data from the participants. Some of the participants may feel uneasy about truthfully answering questions about certain personal traits. They could lie and then throw the data off in order to try and put themselves in a different category of either music preference or personality trait. In order to keep this from happening and to prevent any ethical issues the surveys will be answered anonymously by the participant so that they are not known to the researcher or other participants.

Data Analysis Plan

Prepare Raw Data

In order to analyze the data, I will take the data collected from the survey and turn it into data that can be used to make an analysis of the results. I will utilize SPSS to input all of the data retrieved from the survey completed by the participants. I will use multiple variables. There will be one variable for each personality trait and also one variable for each type of music. I will compare the results of the personality trait questions with those of the music preference questions to see if there are any notable similarities between the participants’ preferences.

Analytic Procedures

After gathering all of the information into SPSS I will calculate the correlation coefficients to see if there are any correlations between the data to prove that music preference is related to personality. This will help to obtain valid and reliable results because it will compare the data and will calculate the similarities between different factors. I will also make use of scatterplots to visually show how the data is correlated. Another procedure I will use is the t-test to compare the variables to one another. I want to see if any of the test results show a significance.

Descriptive Statistics

Since I will be comparing the results of each student, I won’t be making any use of the standard descriptive statistics. I am not interested in the mean, median or mode of any of the results. I am only interested in the actual results given by each participant. Descriptive statistics will not help analyze my data to prove my hypothesis in any way.

Principles and Standards

The proposed data analysis methods are ethical, as outlined by the APA. Each participant is giving their consent when they volunteer to take part in the research study. No personal information will be shared. The data retrieved will only be used for informational purposes. Each participant’s personality will be evaluated based off of the answers they give in the survey. Only then will an opinion be formed about their personality traits, in order to compare them to their music preference.

Results

I predict that the results of this study will prove my hypothesis and show that a person’s music preference is related to their personality traits. I expect each of the 9 music categories will be representative of similar personality traits of the participants who like them. I believe that the results will show that those that listen to Rap music to be more outgoing and have high self-esteem. Those who listen to country will be outgoing. Reggae fans will be very laid back and have high self-esteem. Electronic/Dance music fans will be very outgoing. Rock music listeners will be less outgoing and have lower self-esteem. Pop music fans will be outgoing and have high self-esteem. R&B music fans will be relaxed with high self-esteem. Jazz music fans will be outgoing and have high self-esteem. These results will complement the articles in my references because they conclude that personality is linked to music preference, so I anticipate that my research will also prove this.