Date of Award

1981

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop a course in experimental design and statistics for graduate music therapy students. This study was developed in order to address, specifically, research problems in music therapy. Two recent independent studies of graduate research projects of music therapy studies indicated that the chief deficiencies were inadequate research designs and the under-utilization of statistical devices. As an addendum to the development of the course, a survey of the statistical course offerings in graduate and undergraduate music therapy curricula was conducted. The sixty-four music therapy departments approved by the National Association for Music Therapy were surveyed. With a fifty-four percent response rate, the results indicated that seventy-one of the respondents generally felt that one semester of statistics adequately prepared the graduate and bachelor's level student to read and interpret research as well as to carry out their own research after graduation. These results were particularly interesting in light of the comments by the editor of the Journal of Music Therapy who mentioned that the primary reasons for the rejection of manuscripts were deficient experimental designs and inappropriate statistical usage. The course contained a total of fourteen units: four review units and ten course units. The topics covered in the review units were experimental research and terminology, introduction to the computer terminal, the t-test, and the completely randomized design. The ten course units covered various types of analyses of variance and covariance, multiple correlation and regression, discriminant function analysis, and non-parametric statistics. It is suggested the course continue to be restricted to graduate music therapy students who have at least two semesters of statistics.

Pages

266

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_disstheses.3677

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