Week 8 - short week!

This week was a short week.  We watched and listened to everyone's research proposals and I learned a lot about some of the topics that were presented.  In one instance, the presentation that studied the correlation between athletics and musicians and why athletes were the most likely candidates to quit music, most intrigued me.  It is a very good topic and a trend that we all see in our schools!  However, I didn't even think to study this!  I would be most interested to see the results that this study would yield were it to go through!

I have learned a lot over the course of my time in this class.  I thought I knew what a research article was until I took this class.  There are so many components and thoughts that go into creating a research study and a research article.  From the review of literature at the beginning, reading all of the previous work that has been done in this field, creating a methodology that may include questionnaires, tests, or other figures we would need to create, to learning APA citation.  I was trained in MLA citation when I was in 11th and 12th grade English in high school.  When I say trained, I mean drilled.  MLA was really drilled into the students at my school and we came out as proficient in MLA.  So to switch from MLA to APA format for this course was a difficult transition.  There were so many minor details!  The detail that confused me the most was that a citation within a paper looked like this: (Witaszek. p. 1) instead of just (Witaszek 1).  That was hard for me to grasp.

I feel as though I have learned a lot about how to conduct a research study and then to format it into a research paper.  Including the APA format, studying how to put together a research paper was interesting.  We had to start with a title page, page numbers, and a running head.  Next came the abstract which was given it's own page.  Then came the introduction.  That confused me as well for a while.  I thought the abstract WAS the introduction but they are two separate things!

After the introduction, we started in on the Review of Literature.  The Review of Literature takes a lot of time because it involves reading articles for the study.  Some studies are small and have only 10-12 articles to read before the researcher feels prepared for the study.  Other researchers might read 20, 30, or 40 articles before being prepared to begin a study!

After the Review of Literature came the Methodology.  I wrote my entire original Methodology in past tense before I realized it should be future tense because I haven't actually conducted the study yet.  So I went back through and changed the Methodology to future tense before handing it in!

In addition, to come up with all the items for the study including questionnaires and tests also takes a lot of research and time by itself!!

Research is time consuming!  I've learned to respect researchers!  I always thought research articles were helpful but I didn't realize JUST how much work went into them!

Week 7

This week was spent writing the research etude, analyzing the data from the questionnaire that I posted previously, finishing my research proposal paper, and working on the presentation of present.me.  This was a busy week for me as I also moved to a new city and began work at a new school as their new elementary music teacher!

When analyzing the data from the questionnaire that I had previous created, my hypothesis was correct.  I received a completed questionnaire from 39 respondents who I found online through facebook.com.  "Of the 39 participants, 79% were White, 13% were Asian, 5% were Hispanic or Latino, and 3% were Black or African American.  74% of the participants were female, 23% were male, and 3% of the participants did not specify a gender" (Witaszek. p. 3).

I hosted the survey online at surveymonkey.com which enabled the respondents to complete the questionnaire online in about 5 minutes.  I eliminated the question about age since most of the respondents would be in their 20's and because surveymonkey would not allow an 11th question.

I found that many people experienced some stage fright but not many people let it completely hold them back from performing or speaking in front of others. "Many people experience stage fright either when performing on stage (86% of the participants answered with a yes or sometimes when asked about performing, singing, or dancing in front of others) or when speaking in front of others (73% of participants said sometimes or yes when asked about stage fright when speaking in front of others).  However, despite the high percentage of respondents that stated that they sometimes or always experience stage fright, only 25% of the respondents said they tend to seek to avoid performing or speaking in front of people altogether" (Witaszek. p. 7)

I found that pounding of heart, shaking, and sweating of hands and palms were the most common symptoms of stage fright experienced by the respondents.  In addition, listening to music and staring at a point at the far wall were the two most commonly listed coping methods.  

I found that further research should be done in this area.  "Perhaps a study could be conducted in which participants with stage fright are put into treatment groups, each using a different method to cope with stage fright.  Each participant would have to perform or speak in front other others at the beginning and at the end of the trial.  The participants could be instructed to use the method of their treatment group in order to cope with their stage fright and rank their level of anxiety after using the method as opposed the beginning of the trial when they did not use any method at all" (Witaszek. p. 7)

 

Week 6 - Methodology

This week, we dived into how to create the methodology sections for our research proposal.  When I began this research proposal, I think I went through about 6 different topics before I settled on the topic of sight singing.  Last week, we created a review of literature that pertained to our topic.  I found that James L. Reifinger Jr. was one of the leading researchers on sight singing in an elementary classroom.  He has done multiple studies on what the best method of sight singing is for young students.

I have set out to replicate his study in order to determine what the best method of sight singing is for my own students in my own classroom.  I have hypothesized that using solfege is the best method.  However I have found research that suggests that singing on a neutral syllable such as "loo" might be better for students because it doesn't cause a cognitive overload.

After I created my review of literature last week, I set out to determine the method in which  I would conduct the study were it to be approved by a research committee.  I determined that Reifinger had a great method.  In his study, he split students into different treatment groups by class.  One treatment group learned sight singing using solfege and patterns that were familiar to them (4-note tonal patterns that had been pulled from songs the students had learned previously).  Another treatment group learned sight singing by using solfege and patterns that were unfamiliar to them.  Another treatment group learned sight singing by using a neutral syllable with patterns that were familiar to them.  And the last treatment group learned sight singing by using a neutral syllable with patterns that were unfamiliar to them.  In his study, he spent 16 lessons developing the sight singing skills in each group.  I proposed, in my study, to spend 21 lessons.  Perhaps a longer time period would yield results different than those of Reifinger's study.

Like Reifinger, I proposed that two outside teachers (his were retired music teachers) grade the recorded pretests, posttests, and retention tests.  This would eliminate any bias that would occur if the teacher that taught the students and knew the students graded the exam.  In addition, two separate teachers who did not converse with each out, would grade the tests without knowing the answers first.  They would determine what notes the students were attempting to sing.  Then the grades of the two teachers would be compared for validity.  (Reifinger found an 89% validity in his 2009 study using this method).  After that, the grades for each treatment group would be compared.

In addition to learned about how to create a methodology section of a research proposal, we analyzed data in excel.  I learned how to find the correlation in excel.  Remember that just because there is a correlation between two items, it doesn't mean that the correlation is positive.  The correlation between two items can be negative as well.  In addition, there can be low, moderate, or even high correlation.  In addition to the Pearson function in excel, I put the items into a scatter plot graph that helped me determine if the correlation was positive or negative and if the correlation was low, moderate, or high.