I'm always been interested in the relationship between knowledge of a composer for a piece of music and the resulting judgement of that piece of music. Here's an experiment I propose:
Two groups of people: One group is composed of indentified Rahman fans (those who listen to Rahman often, follow his activities, await his releases, listen to his music quite often.....people in this group) The operational definition of being a Rahman fan would be empirically validated. Second group is composed of casual music fans who are not identified Rahman fans. They might like some of his scores, but do not consider themselves to be actual fans of Rahman. Both groups are selected randomly from the population in India, each meeting group definition criteria based on valid and reliable questionnaires. There are equal numbers in each group (same n). The overall N would be large enough to offset random error sampling and would approximate the Gausian distribution in terms of population representation (good external and internal validity). Now, suppose we split both groups exactly in half so we get 4 groups. Random assignment is used for within group splitting. Suppose all 4 groups listen to a song or an album that's not been heard before by anyone (for sake of argument, even though this may not be possible). Each group is asked to rate the song or album in terms of how much they like it (using a valid and reliable scale theoretically). They are all allowed to listen to the song or album only 3 times in succession (we could create more groups while varying this independent variable (number of times listening to a song) but I won't make it complicated right now). The dependent variable (likeability) would be on a ratio scale (zero scale). Here's how I would like to define each group: Group A - Identified Rahman fans who are told that the song or album is by Rahman, but not yet released publically. Group B - Identified Rahman fans who are told that the song or album is by a new composer not yet established in the industry. Group C - Casual music fans who are told that the song or album is by Rahman, but not yet released publically. Group D - Casual music fans who are told that the song or album is by a new composer not yet established in the industry. In terms of results, I would of course predict that group A would rate the album or song highest. However, I would be most interested to know the difference between Group A and Group B. I hypthosize that Group A would be higher. Also would be interested to know the difference between Group A and C. I predict no significant group differences between Group B and Group D. This experiment is strictly hypothetical. I realize how difficult it would be to pull this off in reality.
