Music and Adolescence - Essay Example

Music and Adolescence Total Number of Words 538 Q Design a study that could explorethe role of music in adolescence, include a short discussion of how previous studies have examined adolescence uses of music. Each adolescent has their own individual preferences with the type of music they regularly listen to. Some of the past research studies have tried examining how the music preferences of the listeners affect their mood (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, tenderness, power, brightness, melancholy, relaxation, and grace) (Zacharopoulou & Kyriakidou, 2009) while others have tried to examine the impact of tempo, rhythmic clarity, rhythmic complexity, pitch level, harmonic complexity, variation of loudness, variation of tempo, rapid changes in loudness, and rapid changes of tempo over the listeners’ mood (Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007). Proposed Research Method Design and Purpose of the Study To determine the common type of music that captures the interest of the adolescence, a quantitative and qualitative research survey study combined with a personal one-on-one interview with a couple of randomly selected individuals will be invited to participate in the study. Basically, the proposed research study will be conducted to examine the factors that could possibly contribute to the listeners’ preferences. The research questionnaire will enable the researcher to determine the common factors that may contribute to the music preferences of the adolescence. These factors include the research participants’ age, gender, and personal character such as being an introvert or extrovert. On the other hand, music preferences include jazz, classical, modern rock, and country songs among others. For the analysis of the research findings, a simple statistics will be computed using the Excel software. For the qualitative research study result, the gathered information will be analyzed together with the literature review in order to avoid a bias judgement. Size of Population and Site Setting Since a larger number of research respondents could increase the accuracy of research findings, a total of 100 research respondents will be invited to fill-up a research survey questionnaire. On the other hand, two randomly selected adolescents will be invited for an interview. Since the research participants of the study are limited to adolescence, the proposed research study design will be conducted within a nearby college or university close to where the researcher is residing. Ethical Consideration of the Study According to Moorman and Podsakoff (1992), a social desirability bias is often connected with organization research. When conducting a research methodology, it is important to avoid too much reliance on self-reported data in order to maintain the accuracy of the research findings (Frone, Russell & Cooper, 1992). The problem with relying too much on self-reported data is the fact that respondents may tend to answer the questions purely based on what they think would lead to a more favourable result. The researcher will refrain from relying only in one source of data to avoid getting a bias research study results. Instead, a multiple sources of data will be used in the research study. For this reason, the researcher has decided to combined the quantitative and qualitive research survey with the interview results and the gathered literature review when analyzing the research findings. Q.2 Describe the findings of at least 2 recent articles that have investigated musics capacity to help people relax. What type of music would you recommend and why? Zacharopoulou & Kyriakidou (2009) gathered a total of 14 Italians, 15 British, and 30 Greek adult listeners to test their emotions which includes happiness, sadness, anger, fear, tenderness, power, brightness, melancholy, relaxation, and grace while listening to 10 Greek traditional music which lasted between 36 to 77 seconds in duration for each song. Based on the 5-point scale research survey results, British listeners (2.70) tend to have a higher relaxation experience as compared to Greeks (2.50) and Italians (2.00) regardless of age, previous musical training, familiarity with Greek music, and gender. Upon performing the Kendall correlation analysis, Zacharopoulou & Kyriakidou (2009) found out that that tempo, rhythmic clarity, rhythmic complexity, pitch level, harmonic complexity, variation of loudness, variation of tempo, rapid changes in loudness, and rapid changes of tempo could signifincantly affect the relaxation mode of the listeners depending on their cultural background. Since Greek listeners are more familiar with Greek music, the research findings revealed that Greek listeners feel more relax listening to sound regardless of tempo, rhythmic clarity, rhythmic complexity, pitch level, harmonic complexity, variation of loudness, variation of tempo, rapid changes in loudness, and rapid changes of tempo as compared with the British and Italian listeners. To understand the impact of music on mood-regulatory processes, Saarikallio & Erkkilä (2007) conducted three sub-studies which includes a meta-analytical review of past research studies, defining the concept of music-related mood regulation through personal interviews and the use of follow-up forms, and a cross-sectional survey using the Music in Mood Regulation (MMR) scale. Contrary to the research findings of Zacharopoulou & Kyriakidou (2009), Saarikallio & Erkkilä (2007) found out that women tend to use music to regulate their mood more than boys and older adolescents more than younger individuals. Likewise, the type of music, lyrics, musical preferences, and the mood regulation abilities of the listeners also significantly affects the listeners mood. To promote relaxation, I would highly recommend mellow songs with slow rhythm combined with slow tempo or beat and repetitive notes or sounds that has no lyrics at all. This type of music works well in my case. For instance: Meditation songs, jazz and/or classical music like Beethoven or Mozart are the type of songs that can make the listeners feel more relax. This type of songs normally uses different instruments like piano and soft strings like violin or classic guitar. For better relaxation effect, the volume of music should not be too loud or too soft. The type of relaxing music that works well for me may not be effective for other people. There will always be a strong possibility for other people to feel relaxed when listening to rock band. Since the type of music has a unique effect on the listener, it is better to ask the person what types of music that can make him relax. In case the listener is not capable of expressing his feelings, the best thing to do is to check on his pulse and breathing pattern of the listener. Normally, the faster the pulse rate would mean that the listener is more excited than relaxed. On the contrary, the slower the pulse rate and breathing pattern would mean that the listener has already reached a relax mode. Q.3 During clinical placement on a surgical ward, how was the sound environment managed? How did it affect the patients in your opinion? What could improve the sound environment for people receiving care at these facilities? As a general rule, situations or noise that could make the patient feel scared or threatened with the operational procedure is strictly prohibited. Therefore, health care professionals such as the nurses, surgeons, and physicians should be conscious of the need to move fast without causing alarm to patients around the surgical ward. For this reason, health care professionals should either make an effort to maintain silence or keep the surroundings happy or calm by mellowing down their voice when doing patients’ rounds. Excessive noise contributes to the decrease in the patients’ wound healing, increase sleep deprivation and cardiovascular stimulation (Christensen, 2005). During a clinical placement on a surgical ward, the sound environment is being managed by encouraging the health care professionals not to panic while serving the needs of the health care needs of the patients. In line with this, running around the surgical ward or shouting is strictly prohibited since this excessive or a sudden loud noise could increase the patients’ blood pressure or elevate their fear which could hinder the recovery period of the patients (Taylor-Ford et al., 2008; Christensen, 2005). In general, the higher the number of people (health care professionals, patients, family members or relatives) around the surgical ward, the louder the noise is expected to be made. Therefore, health care professionals particularly the nurses should constantly remind the patients including their family members and relatives to observe silence while inside the surgical ward. There are instances wherein noise reduction is difficult to control. For this reason, the management team should make it a point to make the surgical ward limited to a certain number of patients and visitors. Patients in the surgical ward should feel relaxed in order to avoid making them feel distressed. As part of the standard operating procedure, the health care team should strictly implement the schedule wherein visitors are allowed to visit the patients inside the surgical ward. This type of management strategy could help majority of the patients to have sufficient time to rest while at the hospital. For example: Visiting hours is allowed only between 10am – 5pm. After 5pm, no more visitors should be allowed to enter the surgical ward. In most cases, hospital has a limited number of male and female surgical wards. Because of the high number of patients being admitted inside the ward, it becomes difficult for the health care professionals to control the sound environment. Based on the study of MacKenzie & Galbrun (2007), 34% of the noise that is present in a surgical ward is avoidable whereas the other 28% is partially unavoidable. The use of ‘Observe Silence’ sign does not really help much in keeping the noise down. Since not all patients can afford to pay for a private room while at the hospital, the quasi-experimental study that was conducted by Taylor-Ford et al. (2008) suggests the need to invest on the use of sound-absorbing panel materials in the physical structure of the surgical ward. With the use of the sound-absorbing panels alone could enable the health care professionals to significantly enhance the recovery period of the patients. References Christensen, M. (2005). Noise levels in a General Surgical Ward: a descriptive study. Journal of Clinical Nursing , 14(2), pp. 156-164. Frone, M., Russell, M., & Cooper, M. (1992). Antecedents and Outcomes of Work-Family Conflict: Testing the Model of Work-Family Interface. Journal of Applied Psychology , 77(1), pp. 65 - 78. MacKenzie, D., & Galbrun, L. (2007). Noise levels and noise sources in acute care hospital wards. Building Services Engineering Research and Technology , 28(2), pp. 117-131. Moorman, R., & Podsakoff, P. (1992). A Meta-Analytic Review and Empirical Test of the Potential Confounding Effects of Social Desirability Response Set in Organizational Behaviour Research. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology , 65, pp. 131 - 149. Saarikallio, S., & Erkkilä, J. (2007). The role of music in adolescents mood regulation. Psychology of Music , 35(1), pp. 88 - 109. Taylor-Ford, R., Catlin, A., LaPlante, M., & Weinke, C. (2008). ffect of a noise reduction program on a medical-surgical unit. Clinical Nursing Research , 17(2), pp.74-88. Zacharopoulou, K., & Kyriakidou, A. (2009). A Cross-Cultural Comparative Study of the Role of Musical Structural Features in the Perception of Emotion in Greek Traditional Music. Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies , 3(1&2), pp. 1-15. Read More