RODNEY ROBINSON JR. The (Lynchburg) News & Advance
LYNCHBURG — “Let It Go,” the hit single from Disney’s 2013 animated film “Frozen,” was the ninth best-selling song of 2014, selling more than 3 million copies. There was a time when it seemed like you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing it.
Now, nearly a decade after its debut, the song has entered a research project, helping Randolph College psychology professor Sarah Beck and two of her students, Hanan Davis and Haley Mundy, analyze how children engage with multimedia music.
Beck mentioned that researchers used it because it had been ubiquitous in children for years.
“It seems like a really interesting opportunity to take a pretty naturalistic approach to really ask kids what they think it’s all about,” Beck said.
Beck said there is a video element to many music platforms such as YouTube and Spotify. Seeing how children interact with music that has a narrative element through video is a unique approach.
“Here we’re working on how they think about musical meaning, and I think that’s an approach that I haven’t seen taken,” Beck said.
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Davis and Mundy interviewed children between the ages of 3 and 10, recruiting participants using flyers with QR codes. There was also an online consent process that parents filled out, which two students used to set up Zoom interviews while reaching out to parents using email and phone calls.
They divided the interviews into three parts — measures of visual understanding; watching a clip of the film’s main character, Elsa, singing; and questions about specific texts.
For a measure of visual comprehension, researchers filmed Elsa on a screen and asked children to choose between two picture squares, one red and one yellow. The squares showed two different expressions of Elsa, and they were asked to choose the square that accurately described how Elsa felt when she sang “Let it Go.”
In the second part of the interview, Davis or Mandy watched a video of Elsa singing with the children. They had three checkpoints within the clip where they asked how Elsa felt and why the kids thought Elsa felt that way.
In the final part of the interview, the researchers asked the children a handful of questions about specific song lyrics for interpretation. One example: What does Elsa want to give up?
They transcribed these responses to generate themes. They also take interview data and turn it into quantitative data that they can analyze. An example of quantitative data is the percentage of children who used visual cues to explain Elsa’s emotions while singing. The researchers will take the data and generate percentages using common themes from the children’s responses.
“We have a ton of data that we’re starting to go through and code,” Beck said.
Mandi said the interview process was her favorite part.
“It’s so amazing to watch them think about it and then rationalize their initial response,” Mundy said.
Davis said it’s fun to see where they personally get their thoughts from.
“It’s really interesting to see those levels, depending on how they rationalize or explain what they’re seeing is really cool,” Davis said.
Beck said the “Kingdom of Isolation” lyric from the song is interesting. She said the kids started comparing the song to the pandemic and how people had to isolate themselves when they had COVID-19.
“It’s really not the focus of our question, but it’s extremely interesting to me to kind of go, wow, this broader context absolutely affects their understanding of the text,” Beck said.
The plan is to write a manuscript and submit a journal article for peer review. Beck said they haven’t decided which magazine yet.
There are potential plans to one day create an interactive children’s book.
Davis and Mundy are rising seniors this year, both majoring in psychology.
Mandi said she had not previously been involved in helping with qualitative data collection, interview-based research, and coding, and she credited her college professors for .
“If you mention that you’re interested in research in general, there are opportunities to join,” Mundy said.
Davis said she was grateful for the overall research experience.
“Overall this was a really good opportunity for me to get a better understanding of all the different things that go into research,” Davis said.
The summer research program ends on July 7. This is the first focused summer the students have worked on this research topic with Beck.
“I’m so impressed with these students because they were really fearless,” Beck said.