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Alicat3104
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Joined: Sun Apr 03, 2022 5:37 pm
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Urgent Help Needed

Post by Alicat3104 »

Trying to create my science fair proposal and set up my experiment. Doing it on effect of different kinds of music on learning while studying. Had a couple questions:
1. Assuming I can't be the subject right? If not, how many people do I need to test? I've read at least 10 is ok but is that true?
2. Was going to have volunteers read a
1 page passage from a textbook then answer 3 questions about the content. Since I have 2 kinds of background music selected, one instrumental and one with singing, plus silence, I guess I'd need to have each person read 3 different passages and answer 3 sets of questions. Does this seem ok? Any ideas for making it better?
koneill18
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Re: Urgent Help Needed

Post by koneill18 »

Hello!

This sounds like a really interesting experiment!

1. You're right, it would be best to not use yourself as one of the participants in the study. The more volunteers you get to participate in your study, the more reliable your results will be. Everyone learns and takes tests differently, so the more people you include in your study, the more applicable your results will be to the population as a whole. But I would agree that at least 10 is a good goal to try for.

2. Yes, if you do the experiment this way you need each person to read three different passages and take 3 different quizzes. You would have to make sure that the three different quizzes all have about the same level of difficulty. If one quiz is much harder than the others, that could affect your results. I would actually recommend splitting your volunteers into 3 different groups: one group listens to instrumental music, one group listens to music with singing, and one group listens to no music. Then they all read the same passage and take the same quiz. This might work better than having the same people take 3 quizzes each.

I hope this helps!
AmyCowen
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Re: Urgent Help Needed

Post by AmyCowen »

To add to the good input Expert Koneill18 gave you, you might find this short summary helpful:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... tive-tasks

That is an abbreviated project, so it doesn't have a full procedure, but it does outline a similar kind of experiment.

Also, the resources on human subjects and sample size may be helpful as you design your project:
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... egulations

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ze-surveys

Amy
Science Buddies
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