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In teaching music therapy assessment to beginning music therapy students, one of the rationales is that one’s musical behavioral manifests non-musical functioning skills. This understanding leads to justification that music has its legitimate efficacy of being therapeutic tool.

At Ewha Womans University, the very first music therapy class, which is "Clinical Techniques in Music Therapy", teaches procedures in music therapy starting with assessment. In order to teach the assessment within the context of indigenous music therapy, I always had concerns about the lack of sufficient assessment protocols developed in our fields. As I reviewed the existing music therapy assessment tools, they include lists of skills pertaining to categories and subcategories of developmental domains: perceptual-cognitive, motor-physical, language-communication, social-emotional, music. Therapists are usually asked to check using various symbols (-, +, √, etc) or numbers for the observed behavioral lists, and the total scores indicate the level of functionality (Chase, 2004).

In music therapy, music becomes the main medium of “therapeutic intervention” that brings out the desired changes in the target area. Music therapists attempt to formulate a blueprint in terms of how music reflects non-musical functions and further how relationship between musical inputs and behavioral outputs are related beginning with the assessment. In the process, often it is done without a concrete assessment protocol or methodology. The assessment interventions are usually inclusive of various music activities, such as singing, playing, improvising, listening, movement, etc. They are mostly activity oriented rather than intra-music oriented. What is observed in the process of assessment is that the “output” is derived without logical structure of the “input.” How legitimate is the relationship between the musical input and observed output when the input is not controlled with sufficient objectivity and validity?

Challenges

Now, let’s speculate then why it was so difficult or is taking us long to develop indigenous music-centered assessment protocol? We definitely know that there is a great significance in one’s musical behavior as part of human behavior. For example, one’s rhythmic behavior has some relevance to one’s cognitive ability of processing the beats in time, and impulsiveness as sounds are reproduced. Similarly one’s accuracy of performing or singing melody also has some relevance to one’s existential way of relating to the external world, sense of self-image (allowing oneself to be heard), and cognitively identifying the tonal contour. So far with these understandings and premises, music therapists attempted to formulate various intervention applications for each session. However the issue is that in terms of formulating and utilizing music itself, there is scarcity in reference for sequencing complexity in the musical task, procedural structures, and interpretative guideline based on normative data in the process of assessment.

As I mentioned earlier, most of the music therapy assessment tools consist of lists of behaviors relating to subcategories of developmental domains. There are many challenges, and to name a few, firstly maybe because one of the characteristics of the music therapy, is that it ‘spreads thin and wide’ with the range of populations, various clinical goals, and diverse use of music activities/interventions for assessment.

Secondly, there are compounding variables involved in the assessment procedures and environment of music therapy. Since the intake is executed by the therapist, much of the therapist-related factors affect the outcome of assessment as well; such as the therapist’s skills intask analysis, delivery, initial relationship building, directive and encouraging attitude, and level of competency in clinical experience.

Third, it may be due to the complex components in music When music is used for assessment intervention, music should go through multi-levels of reduction starting from the major musical elements to as specific as accents, articulation, etc. Such meticulous use of musical units, concepts, intra-musical elements are all significant components in music therapy assessment as an “input” in eliciting behavioral “output.”

Lastly, we need various normative data to have better understanding of where the observed outcome information stands for. In order to place our clients’ functional level either in the developmental or functional spectrum, we need to have normative data for reference. More active research should be done to make relationships among musical and non-musical behaviors.

Everything Starts Somewhere

Apparently, there are many tasks to overcome in terms of the validity and reliability issues as we work on developing the music therapy assessment protocols. However, everything starts from somewhere. If the protocols do not get developed due to these constraints, then it will only delay the development of the indigenous music therapy. Let’s get started and look into it.

Reference

Chase, K. M. (2004). Music therapy assessment for children with developmental disabilities: a survey study. Journal of Music Therapy. 41(1).28-54.

How to cite this page

Chong, Hyun Ju (2013). Are We Striving Enough to Establish Indigenous Music Therapy?. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 09, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=fortnightly-columns/2013-are-we-striving-enough-establish-indigenous-music-therapy