research paper

Running head: Ethnicity, Music Experience, and Depression

Ethnicity, Music Experience, and Depression

Werner, P.D., Swope, A.J., & Heide, F.J. (2009). Ethnicity, music experience and, depression.

Journal of music therapy, 46(4), 339-358.

Summary

Cultural factors had an impact on people with the way they responded to music. Recent psychological research had been focused on ethnicity. One study, based in England, had showed a difference in affective reaction to music between western students and Indian students. However, this result showed no music experience in real life that can be a critical factor for music therapy. Many studies also underscored the need to access music experience of the patients and therapists, which may benefit by using the diversity of music across the ethnic groups. According to many studies, ethnicity may be the factor that varied the prevalence of depression. The first primary outcome of this study was to examine the similarities and differences of the music experience and self-reports of depression across the ethnic groups. The secondary outcome was to identify whether each ethnic group had a correlation between the music experience scores and self-report depression scores.

Two of subsample groups were recruited from a community college in San Francisco and college in the Midwest. There were in total 506 participants, which consisted of 78 African Americans, 111 Asian Americans, 218 Whites, and 87 “Other” ethnic groups. Two of well-developed questionnaires used to measure experience in music and depression were the Music Experience Questionnaire (MEQ) and the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) respectively. The MEQ had 141 items and participants were asked to rate on a 5-point scale for each item. The MEQ divided questions in to six scales and two factors. These six scales of MEQ were Commitment to Music, Innovative Musical Aptitude, Social Uplift, Affective Reactions, Positive Psychotropic Effects, and Reactive Musical Behavior. The two factors of MEQ were Subjective/Physical Reactions and Active Involvement. The CES-D had 20 items representing the symptoms of depression. Participants rated 1-4 points regarding how often they experienced these symptoms. The scores of CES-D ranged from 0-60.

The Asian American group showed the lowest scores on the Subjective/Physical Reactions factor and other two scales of MEQ, Affective Reactions and Reactive Musical Behaviors. The Asian American group also showed the lower score on the Positive Psychotropic Effects scale compared to the White group and Other group. On the other hand, the Asian American group showed higher scores on the Commitment to Music scale compared to African American group. The White group showed the lowest score for CES-D across the other ethnic groups. The significant findings on correlation between the MEQ score and self-report depression was found in the Asian American group. The result showed negative correlation between depression and Subjective/Physical Reaction factor, and Affective Reaction scale.

According to the result of the study, researchers discussed that “ethnicity is a factor warranting attention in understanding people’s behavior and experience” (Werner, Swope, & Heide, 2009, p. 350). They also stated that the difference of music experience regarding ethnicity was more likely to be found in the Subjective/Physical Reaction domain rather than in the Active Involvement factor. This finding was agreeable to a recent study that suggested ethnicity resulted in variation of affection from music rather than the music performances or activities. The negative correlation between the depression and affective, and physiological reactions to music found in Asian American group pointed out that music therapy might not be recommended for treatment of depression in this ethnic group. Two limitations of this study involved the rough classification of ethnicity and the convenience use of the sample. These limitations could be the focus on further study in order to evaluate the relation between music experience and ethnicity.

Critique

“Ethnicity, Music Experience and Depression” is an article that aims to understand the differences and similarities of the music experience with regard to depression across the ethnic groups. The authors of the article cite several previous studies to support the need to study differences between ethnic groups in regard to music therapy due to the lack of investigation in this area. However, there are a number of weaknesses found in this study.

The one major obvious flaw is the sampling. The researcher attempted to collect a representative sample of various ethnic groups characterized as “African Americans”, “Asian Americans”, “Whites” and “Other.” This distribution, however, does not necessarily break these groups into distinctive ethnic groups. For example, “Asian Americans” could consist of markedly different cultures such as Chinese, Japanese, Thai, etc. Furthermore, they were remarkably difference between male and female sample representation. The sample consisted of 71.1% females and 28.9% males. This may not represent the normal population and can cause a bias on the result. The study would have been more reliable if the researchers had provided the prevalence of depression across sex group.

The instruments used for data collection consisted of two questioners, one of which was developed by the authors in their previous study and was used to classify responses in association with musical aspects. The second instrument was a widely accepted depression test used in the same field. The test developed by the authors had been tested for the reliability and had similar result of reliability test with the previous study. The reliability test can ensured the consistency of the instrument.

Although the premise of the study has useful applications, the complexity of a study needed to address the question of whether there is ethnic variation in the treatment of depression needs to be more exhaustive across ethnic groups and account for additional factors such as ethnic variation amongst the current groups. Such a study would also need to account for cultural variations and interpretations of the questions presented in the original questionnaire and would likely need to be translated to multiple languages so as not to introduce a cultural bias from English. The study does, however, seem reasonable as a pilot study to show there could be a significance of cultural variation, especially with Asian ethnicities, and may show some useful differences between the specific groups studied.

The researchers stated, “Building on these results, one may wonder, particularly with Asian Americans, treatments focused on influencing affective and physiological reactions to music will yield reductions in depression will lead to increases in emotional and physiological reactivity to music.” (Werner, Swope, & Heide, 2009, p. 353). This conclusion throws the doubt on the efficacy of music therapy of depression among Asian Americans, which is not clearly defined. Thus, this study shows no significant applicable result.