What have I started?

It's started to hit me this week the enormity of the project I am undertaking. At least it's doable. It might kill me though. I've talked to Dr. Namie about the IRB approval process and have started looking over the forms I will need to complete. I'm aiming to get them submitted by March 26th. That's four weeks from today. I've also been looking into the teachers I would like for my committee. This may seem early, but I think I may need their help to get this together in time to get my IRB approval. Unfortunately the psychology teacher that would have been perfect for this project is on sabbatical until the fall, so I'm back to square one there.

I'm continuing to look into different research that has been done. I've been feeling like I'm drowning in a sea of research that is of no use to me, but I finally found some research from an old class of mine that I think will get me on the right track.

Two articles in particular seem relevant to what I'm trying to research. The first is the "Effects of Music on Anxiety as Determined by Physiological Skin Responses" by Peter O. Peretti and Kathy Swenson which can be found here: http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.uvu.edu/stable/3344765?&Search=yes&searchText=music&searchText=anxiety&searchText=effects&searchText=skin&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Deffects%2Bof%2Bmusic%2Bon%2Banxiety%2Bskin%26gw%3Djtx%26acc%3Don%26prq%3Deffect%2Bof%2Bmusic%2BAND%2Bbiofeedback%26Search%3DSearch%26hp%3D25%26wc%3Don&prevSearch=&item=1&ttl=2684&returnArticleService=showFullText

Participants in this research were asked to complete anxiety inducing tasks with and without music. They found that music had the effect of reducing anxiety in students while participating in these tasks and these effect was especially profound in female music majors. This study helps my thesis of the effect of music on other school subjects seem more promising.

The other article is the "Effect of Music via Television as Reinforcement for Correct Mathematics" by Clifford K. Madsen, Laura G. Dorow, Randall S. Moore and Jeana U. Womble which can be found here: http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.uvu.edu/stable/3344936?&Search=yes&searchText=music&searchText=television&searchText=via&searchText=effect&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Deffect%2Bof%2Bmusic%2Bvia%2Btelevision%26gw%3Djtx%26acc%3Don%26prq%3Deffects%2Bof%2Bmusic%2Bon%2Banxiety%2Bskin%26Search%3DSearch%26hp%3D25%26wc%3Don&prevSearch=&item=2&ttl=6135&returnArticleService=showFullText

This research included an experiment in which children were given musical lessons as an incentive to do well in math. In the results, they found that the students who had the musical lessons as incentive did consistently better than other students in math, even when these other students had tutors. This is another study that seems to support my hypothesis of a link between music and performance in other areas in school.

While I am finding research that seems relevant to my topic and also seems to support the hypothesis I am making, I do need to focus more on the methods of my research at this point. This week my goal is to find questions to use in my research from research that has been done. I want to hit this hard so I can start focusing on pulling together my proposal for the IRB.