A survey of music therapists' attitudes and beliefs about the relationship of popular music to adolescent development

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis was to survey music therapists regarding their currentbeliefs and attitudes of popular music and its relation to normal, healthy adolescentdevelopment. Music therapists use popular music quite often with clients, especiallyadolescents, but the researcher questioned whether therapists had similar or conflictingattitudes concerning music's effect on adolescent development. Therefore, this researchwas conducted in order to understand better what sort of therapeutic value is broughtabout through the use of popular music for adolescents.The researcher constructed a survey, which was sent out to 132 music therapistsselected from the AMTA (American Music Therapy Association) member source bookunder the clinical population heading Child/Adolescent Treatment Centers.The researcher received 70 surveys, but only 63 were used, because the remainingsubjects worked mainly with children and had little or no experience with adolescents.The results produced a great deal of information pertaining to music therapists' beliefsabout popular music's influence on adolescent development. The responses werecategorized into subject headings focusing on gender issues, adult socialization,developmental influences, lyric interpretation, and academic influence. The surveycontained two open-ended questions, which asked the music therapists to state what theirmain concerns were with using popular music in the therapy session and what benefitsthey thought resulted from using popular music. The responses contained many similarthemes, which were categorized and analyzed by the researcher in order to detect trendsin music therapists' attitudes, and beliefs. The literature was used as a source of referral,allowing the researcher to compare and contrast previous findings with current findings.This study examined the relationship of popular music to adolescent developmentthrough the eyes of music therapists. Overall, it seemed that respondents shared manysimilar views in terms of the resulting benefits of using popular music with adolescents.However, certain areas of interest, such as song lyric interpretation, gender-specificissues in popular music, and music's influence on behavior and personality developmentseem to require further attention. This research not only provided a means for gatheringand exploring a great deal of information about popular music and adolescentdevelopment, but it provided the framework for future areas of research.%%%%M.A., Creative Arts in Therapy – Drexel University, 2000