Assignment Two: Design a Correlational Study
Charlene Huang
Net id: ch67
ADV 281 Spring 2023
Study Design
Variables
extraversion – How energetic, sociable, friendly a person is.
tendency of listening to upbeat, energetic music – How often does a person listen to
upbeat, energetic music.
Research Question
Do extroverted students at UIUC listen to upbeat, energetic music more?
Reasoning
Previous research shows that there are links between musical preferences and the Big Five
personality traits. In general, people high on extraversion and agreeableness prefer pop,
soundtrack, religious, soul, funk, electronic, and dance genres (Rentfrow & McDonald, 2009).
Therefore, I would like to design a correlational study that focuses on the relationship between
extraversion and music listening habits to find out if extroverted students at UIUC listen to
upbeat, energetic music more in their daily lives.
Operationalization
Variable: extraversion
Level of measurement: Interval
Measure: Ask respondents to rate their extraversion on a scale of 1 to 5.
On a scale of 1 (introverted) to 5 (extroverted), I see myself as __.
Variable: tendency of listening to upbeat, energetic music
Level of measurement: Ratio
Measure: Ask respondents to report the hours they listen to upbeat, energetic music on
a daily average.
How many hours per day to you listen to upbeat, energetic music on average?
Participant recruitment
Sample:
We will collect 1600 samples from undergraduate students at UIUC, which is around 3.5% of
the total 45000 undergraduate students at UIUC. We will conduct stratified sampling to split
the student population into subgroups based on their college then randomly sample students
from each college to ensure that every college is represented in the sample. This way, our
sample will have students from a variety of majors, grade, gender, and race. We will use the
results of this sample to generalize our results.
Recruitment:
We will randomly pick 10 people per day for ten days to fill out an online questionnaire in the
main building of each college listed below. The recruitment is spread out in ten days so that we
can reach as many students as possible. In exchange, the participants will receive a 2 dollar gift
card at BrewLab for participation. We should receive 100 responses from each college.
Carle Illinois College of Medicine (CIMED)
College of Agricultural, Consumer & Environmental Sciences (ACES)
College of Applied Health Sciences (AHS)
College of Education (EDUC)
College of Fine & Applied Arts (FAA)
College of Law (LAW)
College of Liberal Arts & Sciences (LAS)
College of Media (COM)
College of Veterinary Medicine (VetMed)
Division of General Studies
Gies College of Business (BUS)
Grainger College of Engineering (ENGR)
Informatics Programs
School of Social Work (SSW)
School of Information Sciences (iSchool)
School of Labor and Employment Relations (LER)
Administering the study:
To study the correlation, we will analyze the results with JASP. By importing the csv file of our
study, we can run a correlation on our data. It will show us the statistics of the correlation,
including the correlation coefficient, p-value, and confidence interval. In Jasp, we can also see
the heatmap and scatterplot of our data to investigate the trend visually.
Data analysis
Expected results:
For extraversion
Mean: 3.2
Standard deviation: 0.9
Range: 1-5
For tendency of listening to upbeat, energetic music
Mean: 2.5 hours per day
Standard deviation: 1.2 hours per day
Range: 0-6 hours per day
Expected correlation analysis:
The correlation coefficient between extraversion and tendency of listening to upbeat,
energetic music is r = 0.35, indicating a moderate positive correlation.
The correlation coefficient (r) measures the strength and direction of the linear
relationship between extraversion and tendency of listening to upbeat, energetic music.
In this case, the expected correlation coefficient is 0.35, which indicates a moderate
positive correlation, meaning that as extraversion scores increase, so does the tendency
to listen to upbeat, energetic music. The correlation is positive, but it is not strong.
Scatterplot:
The scatterplot shows a positive linear relationship between extraversion and tendency
of listening to upbeat, energetic music, with some variability in the data. There may be
some outliers or influential data points that are worth exploring.
Degrees of freedom:
DF= n - 2 = 1600 - 2 = 1598, where n is the sample size.
Degrees of freedom is used to represent the number of values in a sample that are free
to vary after certain restrictions have been placed on the data. In this case, the expected
degrees of freedom are 1598, since the sample size is 1600, and two pieces of
information (the mean of extraversion and the mean tendency of listening to upbeat,
energetic music) have been used to calculate the correlation coefficient.
P-value:
The p-value for the correlation coefficient is less than 0.001 (assuming a two-tailed test),
indicating that the correlation between extraversion and tendency of listening to
upbeat, energetic music is statistically significant.
The p-value is a measure of the strength of evidence against the null hypothesis, which
states that there is no significant relationship between extraversion and mean tendency
of listening to upbeat, energetic music. In this case, the p-value is less than 0.001 (less
than 0.05), which means that we can reject the null hypothesis, and we can conclude
that there is a statistically significant relationship between extraversion tendency of
listening to upbeat, energetic music.
Confidence interval:
Assuming a 95% confidence level, the confidence interval for the population correlation
coefficient is approximately (0.29, 0.40), using a standard error of 0.03.
This means that we are 95% confident that the true correlation coefficient of the whole
student body between extraversion and tendency of listening to upbeat, energetic
music in the population lies within this interval, indicating that the relationship between
extraversion and tendency of listening to upbeat, energetic music is statistically
significant.
References
Rentfrow, P. J., & McDonald, J. A. (2009). Music preferences and personality. In P. N. Juslin & J.
Sloboda (Eds.), Handbook of music and emotion (pp. 669695). Oxford, England: Oxford
University
Press.
