Listening to music is an important aspect of daily life that helps to shape identity, manage mood, and relieve boredom1. However, as adults age, their engagement with music and reasons for listening to music change1. In particular, enjoyment of intense contemporary music such as rock and rap decreases, as does the tendency to listen to music while completing other tasks and exploration of new music2. This may be due to changing priorities and goals associated with the challenges of life roles such as student or parent3,4. Developmental theories4 suggest that as we age, we progress through different life roles that shift our goals. Indeed, life goals have been found to predict our use of music with age3. Furthermore, our ever-evolving sense of identity and increasing emotional intelligence may also reduce the need for music to manage mood or express ourselves5. Music has been found to improve the well-being of young adults6, but research including samples of older adults are relatively scarce. There is a good reason to suspect that older adults may engage with music differently1,2. It is important to understand how music may influence the use of music for wellbeing, particularly for older adults, as this age group will increase over the next few decades. Given the limited research on this topic, this research aims to better understand the reasons why people listen to music across the lifespan and to identify factors that may influence these reasons by comparing music engagement across different age groups.

This study is open to anyone over the age of 16. You will answer an online questionnaire about you, your music preferences and why you listen to music. The questionnaire is anonymous and will take 15-20 minutes to complete. This study has been reviewed by the Cross-Faculty Ethics Sub-Committee (CRES) at Oxford Brookes University (UREC: 241777). For more information, please contact PhD research student Shannon Skeffington (19282619@brookes.ac.uk).