The Effect of Upbeat Music on PACER Performance of Middle School Students

Abstract

This study measured middle school stu-dent achievement on the Fitnessgram test for aerobic capacity (PACER) five times during a 3 week period. Participants were middle school aged students from one school in three separate physical education classes: sixth grade (N=47) and seventh grade (N=34) and eighth grade (N=51). One class took the PACER test with just the PACER cadence and with no background mu-sic each time, another group had the PACER ca-dence with upbeat background music each time, and the third group alternated trials with just the PACER cadence with those that also included the upbeat background music. A one-way re-peated measures ANOVA was calculated com-paring the PACER tests scores of participants for the five trials. The No Music group experienced a significant decrease in PACER laps from the 1st to the 5th trial whereas the Music Every Time group had a significant increase in PACER laps. The Alternating No Music/Music group per-formed significantly higher PACER laps when the background music was present than when it was not present. The results suggest incorporating music can increase student performance in aero-bic capacity testing. These findings are con-sistent with those of previous research involving elementary and high school student perfor-mance on the PACER test.