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In response to my last column (on the influence of required reading on the education of music therapy students), John Lawrence made some interesting comments about music therapy research, and I have taken that topic for this final column of 2003.

Lawrence set a task for his students to do a bibliographic reference search, and two questions raised by his students were "Why are so many articles (on music therapy) written by nurses and other non-music therapists? And secondly "Why haven't criticisms made by non-music therapists concerning music therapy's research protocols and sample size been addressed by current music therapists"?

In answer to the first question, I often find that the studies done by nurses can offer valuable evidence for the use of music in hospital settings. It seems that nurses have an interest in the use of music, usually recorded music, and often it is used as a background to hospital procedures. The research is often well designed and yields interesting results. Obviously it can be annoying that the research is termed "music therapy" when the researchers are not qualified music therapists, and this can be confusing for students.

John Lawrence's comments were made at a time that I was reading an excellent article of Darlene Brook's on "A History of Music Therapy Journal Articles Published in the English Language", published in the Journal of Music Therapy, Summer 2003. Brooks reviewed articles published in nine Journals, and designated each article to one of six categories: quantitative research, qualitative research, clinical reports, philosophical and theoretical research, historical research and professional articles. Brooks noted some interesting trends in the type of research articles published between 1960-2000: that quantitative research "enjoyed steady growth for the first 25 years . . . and appears to have leveled off" (p. 158), and that qualitative and philosophical/theoretical articles however have enjoyed an increase in publication, particularly since 1985. She also noted that when comparing the nine Journals it was evident that in the early years of those Journals clinical reports were the most common contributions.

A natural extension of clinical reports is qualitative research, where we study the interactive-ness of music therapy, drawing on client's perceptions of music therapy as well as the music therapist-researcher perspective. It seems to me that we have a diversity of research in music therapy and this augurs well for the future. Within the profession there is a balance of quantitative and qualitative studies - the quantitative to satisfy our medical critics, and the qualitative to inform our own practice. In addition, we can draw on studies done by researchers outside the field of music therapy where the research is well done.

A further question about music therapy research however is: who does the research that is published in music therapy Journals? Many of the articles published in the Journal of Music Therapy originate from Master's and PhD level student research, and this might be the reason that sample sizes can be small. Perhaps we should be encouraging larger studies by using multiple sites thereby ensuring a larger number of clients as subjects. Perhaps we should be doing more collaborative research, by developing research teams across various facilities, thereby increasing the access to clients, and also distributing the responsibilities implicit in carrying out research.

Interestingly, I recently spoke with a colleague who is a Professor of Physiotherapy at the University of Melbourne. I perceived that her research must be so much easier because physiotherapists (I thought) would use similar procedures for a given physical problem. I was surprised to hear her explain that in physiotherapy most research is based on clinical effectiveness, and that scientific-based studies are just as difficult to mount because each human body is different. Even though a cohort of clients may have a similar problem, a physiotherapist clinician may choose different methods of treatment based on a number of physiological parameters presenting in each person.

I was quite encouraged by this, having always assumed that we have it harder in music therapy than any of the other accepted and medically respected therapies. Perhaps our research practice and output is influenced by the small size of the music therapy profession - we have small numbers of practitioners, and small numbers of researchers compared with other health-related professions.

The topic of music therapy research has also been of interest recently while devising the Call for Papers for the 11th World Congress of Music Therapy to be held in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, in July 2005. For the first time, abstracts and proposals will be submitted on-line, and in the Research Theme the pull-down menu offers a range of research sub-themes: quantitative; qualitative; mixed designs and issues in research. We look forward to a broad range of interesting contributions on research and clinical practice. The web-site can be accessed at http://www.musictherapy2005.com. We look forward to welcoming you here in Australia in 2005.

Reference:

Brooks, Darlene (2003). A History of Music Therapy Journal Articles Published in the English Language. Journal of Music Therapy, vol. XL, no. 2, pp. 151-168.

How to cite this page

Grocke, Denise (2003) The Diversity of Music Therapy Research. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 15, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=fortnightly-columns/2003-diversity-music-therapy-research