Topic: research proposal

Order Description Instructions for Research Proposal! Topics in Music Cognition! ! The research proposal is due the last day of class and it should be short (1-2 pages single space, max). In the research proposal, you will be proposing an experiment. Obviously you are not performing the actual experiment, so feel free to be creative! I quickly typed up a sample proposal, posted on Blackboard, so that you can get an idea of what to expect. ! ! In your research proposal, you want to break it down into these subsections:! 1) Aims: what you want study! 2) Rationale/Significance: why you want to study this and what's already been done! 3) Hypotheses: what do you predict you will find! 4) Methods: how you are going to study your question, the subject population, what will they do, how will you assess their abilities and include them in study etc! 5) Discussion: if results come out the way you predicted then why is that important; if results don't come out the way you predicted, what might that mean?; why is this important?! !! Keep in mind that you don't have to invent the wheel--a great way to get ideas for this is to pick a topic you're interested in, see what experiments have already been done, and then tweak that study so it gets at what you want to examine. In music cognition experiments, it's important to keep in mind who you are studying (i.e. your subject population) as well as the stimuli (what music/excerpts etc you might play them). We have already been critiquing music cognition experiments in class so this gives you an idea of what you want to think about.!