Taking gender into account: Brief report on a survey of music therapists’ attitudes to future use of a proposed computer aided evaluation system: The music therapy logbook

Abstract

Analysis of an international survey of music therapists working in the field of neuro-disability (N=44) identified differences in attitude between female and male therapists towards future use of a computer-aided recording and analysis system, the main purpose of which is to track changes in a client's and therapist's use of music over time. This article, a follow up report on the original survey (Streeter, 2010), examines the effects of respondent gender on attitude in order to identify issues that will need to be taken into account during the next phase of research and development. Results indicate that male music therapists may hold more positive opinions about computer-aided practice evaluation than female music therapists. However, the data also shows that female respondents were more concerned than their male counterparts about the ethical and practical issues that might arise if they were to introduce computer-aided evaluation at work. Both genders expressed excitement at the prospect of a specialist system designed to record, store, and quantify changes in music play between a music therapist and a patient.