Classifying Technologies during the Assessment, Treatment Planning, Documentation and Evaluation Phases of Music Therapy: A Survey of Board-Certified Practitioners

Music therapists (MT-BCs) use diverse technologies to provide evidence-based personalized interventions to a wide variety of people. Most studies on the technological practices of MT-BCs report a general overview of the tools they use in their daily work. This study offers an new way of understanding technologies used by MT-BCs, classified and situated in the phases of music therapy (MT) practice: Assessment, Treatment Planning, In-Session, Documentation and Evaluation. An online survey was sent to a mailing list of 1,951 board-certified music therapists (MT-BC), and we received 104 responses. Results support distinct functions in technological practices between each of the phases of MT, revealing categories of notetaking and data entry that characterize planning, documentation and evaluation tasks, and a wider diversity of technology configurations in assessment and in-session work. We end by discussing design implications for HCI researchers and designers of music technologies for health, as well as HCI-MT design collaboration to better support the work of the MT-BC community.