Research Methods Assignment 1. The research question is whether exposure to sun and listening to familiar music affects a person’s mood. 2. The research hypothesis is that a person who is exposed to the sun and listens to familiar music would be in a better mood than a person not exposed to the sun and listens to unfamiliar music. 3. The population of interest for the research could theoretically include all group ages and their status in life.
For the sake of the research, our sample would be students between ages 22-27 from 4 different universities (sample size of at least 60 people to get significant results). 4. We will divide our sample into 4 different groups Sun exposure + familiar music (group 1) | Sun exposure + non-familiar music (group 2) | No son exposure + familiar music (group 3) | No sun exposure + non-familiar music (group 4) | 5. The independent variables in this research are sun exposure and listening to familiar music. The dependent variable is the person’s mood.
Sun exposure can be practically defined by determining a certain amount of time from which we can conclude that a person has been exposed to sun (i.e. 30 minutes).
The definition for familiar music can be determined by a pilot before we begin our research on a population which is not part of the sample through which we can find out which songs are familiar (and conversely non-familiar). This way we can define practically and operationally which songs are familiar and which songs are not.
A theoretical definition for sun exposure can be a person who was exposed to sun but did not specify how much time he/she spent exposed to the sun.
A theoretical definition for familiar music can be songs that a person hears and recognizes.
We chose to define the dependent variable ‘mood’ as a feeling temporarily experienced by a person – not a grand feeling of lifetime