Study Instructions

Thank you for your interest! We appreciate your participation in this study.

 Before you begin to use the app, please read the following instructions carefully. 

The study uses the MuPsych application for Android to collect data about music listening experiences. The app was developed by researchers at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland) and Monash University (Melbourne, Australia). A full privacy and data collection policy must be read and agreed to on the app before data collection can begin.

The study requires you to use MuPsych for a minimum period of two weeks (it will be active for 16 days, however if you complete all the surveys you can finish at 14 days). 

How MuPsych works

MuPsych is an Experience Sampling app. This means we can collect data from real music listening experiences, as opposed to artificially recreating them in a laboratory setting. 

Once you set the app up so that it communicates with your preferred streaming platform (set-up instructions are below), the app is ready to go. Once you start streaming music on that platform, MuPsych will prompt you to answer some questions. These are called “Music Questions”. You do not need to fill in every single music prompt, however please fill in as many as possible. 

This study is about music videos and visual associations with music. For the purpose of this study, a music video is any video of variable length which integrates a song or album with images, and is produced for promotional or artistic purposes. This includes music videos for singles (“traditional” music videos), recordings of performances (including livestreams) and fan-made videos.

Music videos are not videos presented during live concerts on big screens (“Jumbotrons”), or any other multimedia presented at live concerts. Music videos are not songs presented in advertisements or in movies (soundtracks). 

Set Up Instructions

Download MuPsych from the Google Play store! 😀

Selecting the study:

Once you have downloaded MuPsych, it will give you a list of languages. Select English, then

select Music Videos JYU from the list of studies.

It is important that you select the right study, so please make sure the Study id on the MuPsych settings page reads Music Videos JYU (see the picture below for reference)

If you accidentally select the wrong study, you can change this by going to Settings from the menu bar.

Selecting your music player:

Select the platform you use most often for music listening. You can change this at any time in the app’s settings.  

After your music player is selected, the app will begin to prompt when you start listening to music on that app. If you do not get any music questions, check the Help/Troubleshooting page for detailed instructions on how to change your phone’s settings to allow MuPsych to operate. 

NOTE TO SPOTIFY USERS: In order for the app to work, you need to go to your Spotify settings and enable “Device Broadcast Status”. 

The second prompt will happen five (5) minutes later. In this prompt we ask if you have seen the music video for the song you are currently listening to, or the previous song you were just listening to. 

After you have selected the appropriate response, you will be taken to another screen and prompted to fill out a few more questions. Once you have finished answering, the app will close. That is the end of the second set of questions.

It is most important that you fill out these first two sets of questions. 

The third prompt will occur 20 minutes later, if you are still listening to music at this time. The third prompt is optional.

Please note the app will not prompt every time you open your music player: it will give you a few hours before it prompts any other questions. You can also select "Not now" when the app prompts if it is not a convenient or safe for you to respond at that time.

Pre-survey: Please fill out the pre-survey as soon as possible, preferably in the first day you start using the app. After you complete the presurvey, the next survey (“Basic details”) will unlock. The survey screen looks like this:

Surveys

After you complete the pre-survey, you can begin to fill in the additional surveys. Please note that a survey will not unlock until you have completed the survey that precedes it on the list. Some surveys will not unlock until after you have completed the first weekly survey.

Weekly surveys

The first weekly survey will unlock after seven days, and the second weekly survey will unlock after 14 days. The questions in these surveys are specifically about any experiences you had watching music videos in the last seven days.

Please fill in all questions and surveys as truthfully as possible, to the best of your ability.

Your participation is completely voluntary and you may withdraw your participation at any time by contacting the primary researcher (contact details are below) and uninstalling the app.

You must complete a minimum of 20 music question samples (the first set of prompts, and the prompts that come five minutes later) and all mandatory additional and weekly surveys to unlock the reward for participation. Once all the surveys are complete and you have done the minimum number of music questions, there will be a final feedback page. On this page you will be given a unique code that verifies you have completed the study.

We will also be entering participants who complete the study in a draw for one of three €50 Amazon gift vouchers!

Once you complete a minimum of 20 prompts, we will create a personalised listener profile for you. This profile will give you details about your listening style, and the ways in which music influences your emotions. The link to your profile will be available on the app in the “Rewards” tab.

If you have any questions, concerns, or feedback, or you wish to withdraw your participation, please do not hesitate to contact the primary researcher, Johanna Wilson, at jonawils@jyu.fi