What I am going to find out-1. ~ Does age affect the music styles you like?2. ~ Does having children encourage parents to listen to more modern styles?3. ~ Do females spend longer listening to music than males?

AS and A Level Media Studies

Jake Crockford 10FG

Jake Crockford

10FG

Statistics Coursework

Statistics Coursework: Project Design

Project Title: Musical Styles

What I am going to find out-

~ Does age affect the music styles you like?
~ Does having children encourage parents to listen to more modern styles?
~ Do females spend longer listening to music than males?
~ Is the ‘70s most popular in the 41-45 age group
~ Do year 10s spend more time listening to music than year 7s?

Hypothesis 1

Age does affect the music styles you like; more 11-15 year olds will prefer “Emo” music than older people.

I need to know:-

Age group
Preferred music styles

I will show this data by using tally charts for each age group like this:

Age 21-25

Style ¦ Frequency

‘50s ¦ /

‘60s ¦ ///

‘70s ¦ /

‘80s ¦ //

‘90s ¦

Classical ¦ /

Etc ¦

I will use the mode to show what are the favoured styles for each age group to see whether different ages like different styles. The only statistical calculation I will use for this hypothesis is the mode.

Hypothesis 2

Having children does encourage parents to listen to more modern styles.

I need to know:-

Whether they have children
Age of person
Age of child/children

I will show this data by firstly deciding how modern the music styles are and representing them with numbers for instance classical music could have a ‘modernity’ of 1 and blues could have a modernity of 2 etc. Then I will calculate the average modernity for the parents of each group and represent it in a line graph.

For example-

I collected information from 4 adults who had children aged 6-10

Adult 1 had a modernity of 4

Adult 2 had a modernity of 4

Adult 3 had a modernity of 6

Adult 4 had a modernity of 3

Average modernity of parents of children aged 6-10= 4.25

I will then do this with each age group (of children) and also adults with no children to see whether modernity increases as an adult goes from childless to having young children, to having teenage children. I also suspect that the modernity will start to decrease as the age of the children is over 21 years old.

The graph in which this will be displayed will look something like this:

Hypothesis 3

Females spend longer listening to music than males.

I need to know:-

Gender
How long spent listening to music per week.

I will do girls and boys separately and represent the data on two separate scatter graphs. I will then use the Spearman’s coefficient to measure each gender’s correlation.

I will do two bar graphs with length of time on the x-axis and number of girls/boys on the y-axis.

Also I will calculate the averages for lengths of time for each gender.

Hypothesis 4

‘70s is the most popular music style in the 41-45 age group.

I need to know:-

Age group
Preferred music styles

I will use a tally table to show how many people like what styles in the 41-45 age group. Then I will work out the mode to see which is the most popular in that group.

Hypothesis 5

Year 10s spend longer listening to music than year 7s.

I will need to know:-

Year group
Time spent listening to music per week

I will do the same as with hypothesis 3 but instead of girls/boys it will be year 10s/year 7s.

Some assumptions that I will be making is that people do listen to and enjoy music. Also, I will be assuming that people will be honest while answering the questionnaire. Some things that might cause someone to lie in the questionnaire are:

Copying friends
Embarrassment of the truth
As a joke
Trying to impress people

To help reduce these ‘false’ questionnaires I will attempt to decipher which ones are real and which ones are fake. Tell-tale signs of fake ones will be if they have ticked all the boxes or if they have ticked an age other that 11-15 (pupils).

Data Collection

To collect the data for my coursework I am going to use a stratified sample of the pupils at my school, so I get an overall view of the data. To identify and reduce bias I will make sure the questions that I ask will not be leading. Bias will also be reduced because my sample will be large enough to be representative of the data. For my sample of adults, I will be using a cluster sample, the cluster being colleagues of my dad who work with him. A disadvantage of using this sample is that it could be biased; all the people work at the same place and are therefore not totally random people.

I have undertaken a pilot questionnaire which was successful and proved that no changes needed to be made.

Calculations for my stratified sample:

Total number of Year 7 pupils: 268

Total number of Year 10 pupils: 268

Year 7 268/536 × 100 = 50

Year 10 268/536 × 100 = 50

I also need 50 girls and 50 boys so I can do 25 girls and 25 boys from each year group.

So I will need 25 Year 10 girls, 25 Year 10 boys, 25 Year 7 girls, and 25 Year 7 boys.

To do this I have given year 7 and year 10 pupil a number, and used a random number generator to find which pupils I need to give questionnaires to.

During my data collection I decided to use a random number generator by visiting the website www.random.org and using the random integer generator. I decided to use a random number generator because it would be accurate and not be influenced by anything. For the adults, I decided to give out 60 questionnaires and got 59 of them back.

In evaluation, I find that my questionnaire is easy and clear to complete and is ready to be given out to pupils.

I have completed my questionnaire and found only two false ones, in which they ticked all the boxes, including ages and gender.

Here I have enclosed a copy of the questionnaire:

Questionnaire

Gender: Female ▢ Male ▢ (please tick)

Age Group: 11-15 ▢ 16-20 ▢ 21-25 ▢ 26-30 ▢

31-35 ▢ 36-40 ▢ 41-45 ▢ 46-50 ▢

51-55 ▢ 56-60 ▢ 61-65 ▢ 66+ ▢

Do you have any children? Yes ▢ No ▢

If yes, how old are they? 0-5 ▢ 6-10 ▢ 11-15 ▢