Category: Inquiry 3 – How Music Affects People

Inquiry Project 3

INQUIRY QUESTION:

Started as: What do shoppers and employees in different age categories think of the music at Lougheed mall and how would they change it if they could?

Ended up being: How do different people react to different versions of the same song?

Our original plan was go to Lougheed mall for about an hour and ask customers to fill out a quick survey about how they liked the music playing. Unfortunately, we ran into a road block when the management at Lougheed Mall wouldn’t let us survey their customers.

The following is a copy of the letter (minus student names) my partner and I took to Lougheed mall management.

Letter to Lougheed Mall Management

After ‘failing’ at our first attempt – or rather not succeeding the way we had hoped – we changed courses a bit and came up with our revised question: “How do different people react to different versions of the same song?”

We then set out to ask those around the school to participate in a new questionnaire we made.

The results were somewhat lacking. We ended up with 24 participants in total. 21 of them were our peers, falling into the 13-18 age category, and only 3 of them were in either the 30-49 category or the 50-64 category. Therefore, for the purposes of our presentation, we simply separated the ages into 2 broad categories: those 29 and under (or 13-18) and those 30 and up.

We presented our findings to our class on December 7th in the following powerpoint presentation. The last slide summarizes what we would do differently if we were to redo the project.

Inquiry 3 Data Presentation

Inquiry 3 Song Clips

 

This is the compilation of clips Meghan and I put together to play for participants as they filled out the questionnaire we gave them.

Little Drummer Boy Versions

We gave each version a number (corresponding to numbers on the questionnaire) instead of stating the singer in an attempt to avoid bias, though we could not completely control that variable as many participants were able to recognize the artists regardless.

 

 

Inquiry 3 Questionnaire

 

This is the questionnaire we provided participants with as we played clips from four different versions of the song Little Drummer Boy.

Inquiry 3 Questionnaire (Music)

First, we asked participants to fill out question #1 (pertaining to their age category).  Then we proceeded to explain how they would hear four different versions of a Christmas song, which had numbers corresponding to those on the questionnaire.  We played our compilation of clips as participants filled out the questionnaire, and rewarded them with a candy cane after they were finished. 🙂