Qualitative Research Methods

In general, when looking for previous research in music therapy, you will be consulting and citing three formats:

journal articles

Mitchell, E. (2019). Community music therapy and participatory performance: Case study of a coffee house. Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy, 19(1). https://doi.org/10.15845/voices.v19i1.2701

books

Silverman, M. J. (2015). Music therapy in mental health for illness management and recovery. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198735366.001.0001

book chapters

Ahonen, Heidi. (2016). Adult Trauma Work in Music Therapy. In: The Oxford Handbook of Music Therapy. Ed. Jane Edwards. Oxford University Press. 268-288. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199639755.013.47

A library database is an online searchable collection of information, often in the form of references to articles, books, and book chapters (but also newspaper articles, thesis, music, etc). These examples offer a glimpse of how databases are used.

Dissertation

Lee, J. (2015). The effects of music on pain: A review of systematic reviews and meta-analysis (see page 33)

Scholarly Article

Alvarenga, W., Leite, A., Oliveira, M., Nascimento, L., Silva-Rodrigues, F., Nunes, M., & Carvalho, E. (2017). The Effect of Music on the Spirituality of Patients: A Systematic Review. Journal of Holistic Nursing, 36(2), 192–204. https://doi.org/10.1177/0898010117710855

Systematic Review

Magee WL, Clark I, Tamplin J, Bradt J. Music interventions for acquired brain injury. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2017, Issue 1. http://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD006787.pub3. (see Methods)

1. Tutorial: Developing a research question: for graduate students
2. Consider word variations and synonyms
   • think about how others might refer to your ideas
   • e.g, child death, perinatal death, neonatal death, stillbirth, sudden infant death, etc.
3. Search Tactics

   What is the tactic?	What does the tactic do?	Examples
   Boolean AND	Use AND to ensure that all terms appear in every search result.	depression AND home care
   Boolean OR	Use OR to ensure that at least one term appears in every search result.	auditory OR acoustic OR sound
   Phrase searching	Use “quotation marks” to find more than one term in a row.	“vibroacoustic therapy”
   Truncation	Use an asterisk* at the end of a term to include multiple endings. (sometimes $)	trauma* trauma, traumatic, traumatically, traumatize, traumatized, traumatizing
   Wildcard	Use a question mark ? within a term to search for variations of a single character.	decoloni?e decolonize, decolonise
   Proximity	Use NEAR/n to search for terms within n words of each other (sometimes ADJ/n)	"music therapy" NEAR/5 child* OR adolescent*

   Tutorial: Better searching using AND, OR, NOT 

4. Employ search limiters (available limiters depend on the database)
   • peer reviewed, article type, date
   • e.g, in PsycInfo, can include: age group, population group, methodology
5. Identify key publications and authors
   • note citations, and cited references, repeated author names
6. Document and track everything you do in the steps above

Tutorial: Finding books in Omni
Tutorial: Requesting books from other libraries in Omni

• Start with known titles
  • Hendricks, K. S. (Ed.). (2023). The Oxford Handbook of Care in Music Education. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197611654.001.0001
  • Edwards, J. (2016). The Oxford handbook of music therapy. Oxford University Press. http://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199639755.001.0001
• Search with Omni
  • limit to "Books and eBooks", e.g, Music Therapy"
  • use call number (e.g. to find location of Laurier's print items)
  • sign in to request from other Omni libraries
    • use Scan on Demand for chapters or articles
  • Tip: Search within ebook collections to search within the full text of eBooks (as opposed to searching titles in Omni)
    • Ebook Central (Proquest)
    • Academic Collection (ESBCO)

Tutorial: Finding scholarly articles on a topic

Search in Omni

• limit to "Articles" and "Peer-reviewed journals"
• article content in Omni is not chosen or curated, but dumped in, i.e, it may not have everything on a particular topic.

Researchers rely on curated collections of content according to discipline

• RILM Abstracts of Music Literature (academic, international in scope)
• Music Periodicals Database (more popular content, e.g, Billboard)
• CINAHL (nursing and allied health)
• PsycINFO (psychotherapy, counseling)
• Pubmed (health-related content)
• Cochrane Library (Evidence-based trials) (Edwards, 2016, p. 732)
  • e.g, Music therapy for people with autism spectrum disorder
  • What are Systematic Reviews (Cochrane YouTube)

Other interdisciplinary subject databases that may be helpful depending on your topic

• ERIC (education)
• SPORTDiscus (kinesiology)
• MEDLINE (medical)
• Sociology Collection
• Web of Science

Other considerations

• You can "hand-search" journal publications
• Identify non-scholarly (popular) music articles using the Music Periodicals Database
• There are other subject-based databases that might be relevant to your search area, such as Education or Sociology
• If you already know the title of an article, you can search for it in Omni
  • Finding an article when you only know the title

Predatory journals are a global threat. They accept articles for publication — along with authors’ fees — without performing promised quality checks for issues such as plagiarism or ethical approval. (Grudniewicz, A., Moher, D., Cobey, K. D., Bryson, G. L., Cukier, S., Allen, K., & Ardern, C. (2019). Predatory journals: no definition, no defence. Nature, 576(7786), 210+)

• Rising number of ‘predatory’ academic journals undermines research and public trust in scholarship (The Conversation, Sept. 19, 2023)
• Google News search for "predatory journals"
• International Journal of Physical Education, Sports and Health (example)
• Beall's list (wikipedia page)
• Think. Check. Submit.

Examples

Greenhalgh, T. (2019). How to Read a Paper: The Basics of Evidence-Based Medicine and Healthcare. (6th ed.). John Wiley & Sons.

Grant, M., & Booth, A. (2009). A typology of reviews: an analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 26(2), 91–108. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-1842.2009.00848.x

• Use Sage Reference to learn about research methodologies, e.g, action research, grounded theory, or literature reviews, e.g.,
  • Sage Handbook of Grounded Theory
  • Sage Handbook of Ethnography
  • Sage Handbook of Narrative Inquiry
  • Sage Handbook of Performance Studies
  • NOTE: Laurier does not own all Sage Handbooks online

Dissertations and theses may be considered scholarly sources since they are closely supervised by a dissertation committee made up of scholars, are directed at an academic audience, are extensively researched, follow research methodology, and are cited in other scholarly work.

However, dissertations are still considered student work and are not peer-reviewed. Always clarify with your instructor as to whether you can include and cite dissertations and theses in your research.

• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

It is helpful to know about the prominent music therapy journals (Edwards, 2016, p. 711) if you want to stay on top of current research in this field, or to know which journals to "hand-search." While you can browse and search these journals, all of these titles are indexed in RILM where a more efficient search on a topic can be completed.

• Approaches: an Interdisciplinary journal of Music Therapy
• Australian Journal of Music Therapy
• British Journal of Music Therapy
• Canadian Journal of Music Therapy
• Journal of Music Therapy
• Music and Medicine
• Music Therapy Perspectives
• Music Therapy Today
• New Zealand Journal of Music Therapy
• Nordic Journal of Music Therapy
• Psychomusicology
• Qualitative Inquiries in Music Therapy
• Voices: a World Forum for Music Therapy

related journals

• Alternative therapies in health and medicine.
• The Arts in Psychotherapy
• Music Perception
• Psychology of Music

The Laurier Library owns print copies of the APA Style Guide, but not the electronic version. Most information you will need to guide you for this class will be found on the APA Style guide website.

Remember that the APA Style Guide is more than just information on how to cite, it is also prescribes rules about how to write. Since in this class you are reviewing anti-oppressive principals, consider the APA guidelines:

• APA Bias Free Language Guidelines