Introduction and Methods

Studying with Music

The transition from high school to college gives students much more freedom. The change from being in class less but needing to study more can be difficult to grasp. Because there are no teachers or parents monitoring study the style of studying in college is based on the student. This poses the question, do college students listen to music while they study? Many studies have gone into the effects of listening to music while multitasking but the survey results of how many college students listen to music while studding is fascinating. 

            There have been a lot of studies on what listening to music does to people while trying to focus and get work done. A study that was conducted in 1995 found “a significant, positive effect on performance, organization satisfaction and mood states when personal headsets playing music were used in an office situation” (Adrian Furnham, Anna Bradley). While this study is dated it still showed a positive correlation between listening to music and getting work done. Furthermore, it is important to point out that this study was done before the music was listen to on phones. This is a key factor in multitasking because the people in the study were only listening to music and did not have any other distractions. 

            When looking at more recent studies and listening to music it is important that the music is playing off a phone which could lead to other distractions. It was found that “students averaged 35 distractions, for an average duration of 25 minutes” (Charles Calderwood, Philip L. Ackerman, Erin Marie Conklin, 2013). The amount of distractions that are caused by trying to multitask and study can be very impactful on studying. While music was not the only distraction found in the study it was still a factor when looking at how students were studying and becoming distracted. However, the other “24 students who did not listen to music during the session had fewer overall distractions (M 1⁄4 25.04), compared to students who listened to music during part or all of the session” (Charles Calderwood, Philip L. Ackerman, Erin Marie Conklin, 2013). While the students that listened to music and multitasked while studying they had many more distractions than the other students. Due to the greater distractions not listening to music in this study was found to be more beneficial. 

            In another study conducted at George Mason University researched how listening to music effected reading comprehension. The study was with two groups of students and they had an hour to read an article and answer questions about it. One group listened to music while they did it and one did not. The study found that “there was a negative correlation between frequency of listening to music while studying and sustained attention for the Reading Comprehension section” (Michael S. Wilderman). Based on how well the students did on the test after reading showed that listening to music hurt their ability to understand the reading. Furthermore, reading is a critical part of studying and if people cannot retain information while listening to music it would not benefit studying. 

            The final study about listening to music while studying was more focused on what type of music was listened to. The study had students take a test after studying in various types of music. The study found “no main effect was observed for average reading scores between the pop music (M = 5.08, SD = 3.86), classical music (M=3.85, SD = 2.11), and silence conditions (M = 6.46, SD = 3.95, F < 1.9) “ (Lara Dodge, Michael C. Mensink). Although the results in this study are not pointing at one genre of music it is important that they are all the same. This means that listening to music in general has the same effects when studying no matter the type.

Methods

Participants: The people that took the survey were all University of Iowa students ranging from freshman to seniors. 75 students took part in the survey. 

Procedure: The participants took a five-question survey consisting of the following questions.

Do you listen to music while studying?

Do you get distracted by music when you study?

Does listening to music help you focus?

What type of music do you listen to while studying?

How loud is the music while you study?

The following questions were on google forms and sent to the participants. The questions are all one dimensional, but the participants had a variety of answers to choose from. Because the questions were all one dimensional it made the results very clear and easy to analyze.