Research Question
The proposed question for the research is how listening to music when studying affects the attention of students.
Research Objectives
The specific objectives of the study will include:
1. To determine if students who listen to music when studying show high levels of sustained attention
2. To examine if students listening to music when studying record a better performance on their academic tasks
3. To investigate the impact music has on students studying on comprehension tasks compared to a memorizing task
Literature Review
According to a study done by Chou, (2010) the amount of concentration or attention that can be deployed in every activity carried out by a student is limited. Therefore, the attention needed to complete several tasks depends on the demand of the activity and should be done in isolation. A student may be unable to study while listening to music since the supply of attention is divided making one activity fail. Huang & Shih, (2011) explained that the reason students listening to music when studying fail is because some of the relevant information that should be noted during the input process is not recognized as the individual was unable to concentrate fully.
Mori, Naghsh&Tezuka, (2014) stated that for students, there is no learning without attention which means that different types of learning such as explicit and implicit learning depends on the attention of the student. The more complex a learning task is the more attention it needs and therefore, music acts as a distraction to the student’s mind making it difficult for the individual to concentrate. Music excites the student and as Mori et.al (2014) noted, when carrying out learning tasks, it is important for the student to balance between excitement and calmness since no matter how small the distraction is, concentration is lost therefore making completion of tasks difficult. Moreover, in their study, Huang & Shih, (2011) noted that students who learnt without music in the background had better results than those who listened to music.
On the other hand, Chou, (2010) acknowledged that most students assume music has a modulating effect which brings out inhibitory and excitatory factors in them. The factors may react positively to the student making them to improve their performance depending on the type of music since music can calm or excite. In some cases, music can be a motivating factor to the student although it depends on the type of music played.
Methodology
The researcher seeks to recruit a sample of 40 students in different courses within the institution. The researcher will create a questionnaire to gather the academic characteristics and musical preferences of the respondents. Therefore, a quantitative study will be conducted. The research will consist of a pre-test, post-test, and a control (Saunders, 2011). The respondents will be given an assignment to complete in a normal class. After fifteen minutes of completing the assignment, all participants will fill a pre-test questionnaire. After this, the same group of respondents will be given another task but background music will be introduced in the learning environment. After another fifteen minutes, they will complete a post-test questionnaire. In addition, the same procedure with same tests will be administered to a control group the difference being no music. The survey questionnaire will use a Likert scale. Analysis of results will be done using SPSS 22.0. Correlational analysis will be used to test the relationship strength between two variables; listening to music and student’s attention. Validity will be tested using Pearson correlation SPSS. The instrument will be valid if correlation value is >0.3 and reliable if Cronbach Alpha is >0.6 (Creswell, 2002). A sample of the questionnaire has been provided below.

References
Chou, P. T. M. (2010). Attention Drainage Effect: How Background Music Effects Concentration in Taiwanese College Students. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 10(1), 36-46.
Creswell, J. W. (2002). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative (pp. 146-166). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Huang, R. H., & Shih, Y. N. (2011). Effects of background music on concentration of workers. Work, 38(4), 383-387.
Mori, F., Naghsh, F. A., &Tezuka, T. (2014). The Effect of Music on the Level of Mental Concentration and its Temporal Change. In CSEDU (1) (pp. 34-42).
Saunders, M. N. (2011). Research methods for business students, 5/e. Pearson Education.