Synthesis Sunday: The Reading I Did This Week
I tried to start my hour of reading every night habit this week. I got two nights finished before my schedule intruded. So, this week's goal is three nights of reading (or more, if I can fit it in, but no pressure on me).
This week, I finished reading the book I started quite a bit of time ago. A Comprehensive Guide to Music Therapy was an interesting read. It's a wonderful overview book and opened my eyes to many of the music therapy domains and realms that I have not explored. There are still many, many more that were not described in this book, but there was enough information in this text to make it valuable in my continuing journey to find my way in this vast and complex music therapy world. There were lists of names of music therapists who have developed theories, methods, and supported their ideas through research. There was a discussion about Evidence Based Practice in a format that allowed me to understand what it was we are constantly talking about. I spent lots of time in contemplation after completing my reading of the text.
The next night, I started reading Research in Music Therapy: A Tradition of Excellence by Standley and Prickett. This text is a compilation of research articles from the Journal of Music Therapy and Music Therapy Perspectives from the past. I enjoy reading what we used to think was true about music therapy. Some things are still true. Others are no longer widely accepted. It is interesting to track how someone like Michael Thaut was writing about population-specific music therapy back in 1989 and to compare that to what he writes about today. It is interesting to watch thoughts evolve.
The article that I read was entitled, "The influence of music therapy interventions on self-rated changes in relaxation, affect, and thought in psychiatric prisoner-patients" by Michael H. Thaut. It was originally published in 1989 in the Journal of Music Therapy. There are glimmers of Neurological Music Therapy in this discussion, but the ideas are not fully present in the research with persons with psychiatric diagnoses. It was interesting to read from a historical perspective.
One of the major things that my synthesis reinforces each and every time is the continuing disconnect that I have between statistics and research questions. This has been a major challenge for me forever. I have taken many courses on both statistics and research methods, but there has never been one that told me what test to do to answer my questions. It's not been for lack of trying to figure this out, but the concept still eludes me. Solution? More reading research and analyzing the questions as well as the types of statistics used in the research to answer those questions. I will decipher this mystery!
By the way, here is a link to a website that I've looked at several times before that starts to cast a shimmer of understanding on the dim part of my brain. It comes from the Institute for Digital Research and Education at UCLA. I hope it will help to reinforce my exploration of this world of research questions and corresponding statistics. (Here's the confusing part - I certainly understand the chart, but I still don't understand how the chart matches up to the research questions that people have in their research - I told you, there is some sort of block in my brain...)
This week, I finished reading the book I started quite a bit of time ago. A Comprehensive Guide to Music Therapy was an interesting read. It's a wonderful overview book and opened my eyes to many of the music therapy domains and realms that I have not explored. There are still many, many more that were not described in this book, but there was enough information in this text to make it valuable in my continuing journey to find my way in this vast and complex music therapy world. There were lists of names of music therapists who have developed theories, methods, and supported their ideas through research. There was a discussion about Evidence Based Practice in a format that allowed me to understand what it was we are constantly talking about. I spent lots of time in contemplation after completing my reading of the text.
The next night, I started reading Research in Music Therapy: A Tradition of Excellence by Standley and Prickett. This text is a compilation of research articles from the Journal of Music Therapy and Music Therapy Perspectives from the past. I enjoy reading what we used to think was true about music therapy. Some things are still true. Others are no longer widely accepted. It is interesting to track how someone like Michael Thaut was writing about population-specific music therapy back in 1989 and to compare that to what he writes about today. It is interesting to watch thoughts evolve.
The article that I read was entitled, "The influence of music therapy interventions on self-rated changes in relaxation, affect, and thought in psychiatric prisoner-patients" by Michael H. Thaut. It was originally published in 1989 in the Journal of Music Therapy. There are glimmers of Neurological Music Therapy in this discussion, but the ideas are not fully present in the research with persons with psychiatric diagnoses. It was interesting to read from a historical perspective.
One of the major things that my synthesis reinforces each and every time is the continuing disconnect that I have between statistics and research questions. This has been a major challenge for me forever. I have taken many courses on both statistics and research methods, but there has never been one that told me what test to do to answer my questions. It's not been for lack of trying to figure this out, but the concept still eludes me. Solution? More reading research and analyzing the questions as well as the types of statistics used in the research to answer those questions. I will decipher this mystery!
By the way, here is a link to a website that I've looked at several times before that starts to cast a shimmer of understanding on the dim part of my brain. It comes from the Institute for Digital Research and Education at UCLA. I hope it will help to reinforce my exploration of this world of research questions and corresponding statistics. (Here's the confusing part - I certainly understand the chart, but I still don't understand how the chart matches up to the research questions that people have in their research - I told you, there is some sort of block in my brain...)
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