Do trumpet players have a greater expiratory capacity than those who do not play a wind instrument?

Abstract

The following experiment tested whether students who play the trumpet have a greater expiratory capacity than students who do not play a wind instrument. To do this, we tested the peak expiratory flow (PEF) of two groups — the experimental group (the trumpet players) and the control group (the students who do not play a wind instrument). We matched 12 trumpet players and 12 controls for similar age, height, sex, and race. After students performed three attempts to blow into the peak flow meter, we recorded the highest PEF for each student. In order to test whether the data was statistically significant, a t-test was performed. The mean PEF for the experimental group was 378 L/ min, and the mean PEF for the control group was 337 L/min. The p-value was 0.2433, indicating that there was no statistically significant difference in the peak expiratory flow between the experimental and the control group.