A systematic review of research in music intervetnion for people with cerebral palsy

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to synthesize research studies in music intervention for people with cerebral palsy. Nineteen experimental research studies published during 1976- 2015 from PubMed, CHINAHL, ERIC, ThaiLIS, and ProQuest met the inclusion criteria of this review. A coding form, consisting of a) publications and researchers, b) research methodology, and c) research content and music intervention, was developed as a research instrument for collecting the characteristics data from these research studies. Descriptive statistics (frequency and percentages) were used to analyse the data and describe the research findings. The result of the systematic review indicated that the largest number of research studies were articles (84.2%) which were published via journals in the field of medicine (57.9%) during 2011 - 2015 (52.6%). Single-case study, one group pretest-posttest, and randomized control group pretest-posttest were equally used as research design at 21.1%. Participants in the research studies were mainly diagnosed as Spastic Cerebral Palsy (26.3%) in adolescence to early adulthood (21.1%). In terms of research contents and music intervention, Neurological Music Therapy (NMT) was the most widely used theory for developing the music intervention (42.1%). Music movement was the most popularly used (52.6%). Songs were most commonly selected by researcher based on assessment (42.1%). Audio equipment was mostly used as the music instrument or material (25%). In respect of the number of sessions and the duration of time, the music intervention was given to participants only one time (26.3%) for 30 minutes mostly (36.8%). The outcomes were largely in the area of physical development (63.2%) such as gait, find motor, gross motor, and step cadence. Regarding the testing results, most of the research findings were based on the hypothesis (26.3%).;