Discourse analysis reframes oncologic music therapy research findings

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Abstract

Constructivism informed an investigation into music therapy's relevance in a cancer hospital, that is, what did the music therapy do and did it help? Thematic findings, emergent from separate group data analyses (representing patients, visitors, staff, and a researcher's reflections), were contrasted and compared. While some perceptions about music therapy's relevance were shared, discrepancies were also evident. A discourse analysis provides a framework for examining how social reality is produced, acknowledging how multiple meanings can emerge through disparate dialogues informing individual life histories. A discourse analysis on this music therapy research extended the researchers’ reflexivity, provided a rationale for discrepant interpretations about music therapy's efficacy, and enabled alternate interpretations of some of the data and findings. Consequences of endeavouring to “hear” the multiplicity of meanings on discourses that serve to maintain music therapy professionalism, inevitable when examining subjective human experiences, are considered.

Section snippets

Postmodernism, discourse, and music therapy

Over the past 30 years, music therapy has become an established discipline in cancer and palliative settings (Munro & Mount, 1978; Rykov & Salmon, 2001). In these settings, music therapy can be defined as the creative and professionally informed use of music in a therapeutic relationship with people identified as needing physical, psychosocial, or spiritual help, or aspiring to experience further self-awareness, enabling increased life satisfaction. Musical “techniques” are offered in

Method of data collection and analysis

In a study on the relevance of music therapy in oncologic inpatient wards (i.e., what did the music therapy do and did it help?), people who both experienced and overheard music therapy sessions in the single and multibed rooms were invited to anonymously write answers to short open-ended questionnaires (O’Callaghan & McDermott, 2004). Criterion sampling, that is, all cases that met selected criteria, was used (Rice & Ezzy, 1999). The first author (music therapist clinician and researcher)

Discourse analysis

Discourse analysis’ social constructivist epistemology is reflected in its focus on how the “social world is constructed and maintained” (Phillips & Hardy, 2002, p. 2). Such analyses have emerged in recent decades in linguistics, sociology, psychology, medicine, and nursing (Georgakopoulos & Goutos, 1997; Gunnersson et al., 1997). Discourse analysis is a “reciprocal and cyclical process” in which one alternates back and forth between the data and the “situated meanings it is attempting to build

Gee's discourse analysis framework applied to oncologic music therapy research findings

1. Semiotic building, that is, using cues or clues to assemble situated meanings about what semiotic (communicative) systems, systems of knowledge, and ways of knowing, are here and now relevant and activated. (Gee, 1999, pp. 85–86)

The findings did not reflect all voices qualified to participate in the study3

Conclusion

Privileging subjective meanings or lay knowledge is “the primary marker of standards in qualitative research” (Popay, Rogers, & Williams, 1998, p. 344). This article delineated how discourse analysis offers a framework for extending investigations on how subjective interpretations about music therapy experiences are constructed. Discourse analysis highlights how personal and socio-historical contexts offer important insights into how research data is created and analysed, and how research

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