The study’s objective was to “determine the effect of music therapy on depression and physiological parameters in elderly people who were living in a nursing home” (Gök Ugur et al., 2017, p. 1280). The available literature shows that music therapy could alleviate depression, and thus the authors of this study wanted to investigate such claims in elderly people living in a nursing home.
Research & Design
The study design used in this case was a randomized controlled, single-blind trial. Therefore, the involved participants were randomly placed into two categories – a music group or a control group. This design supports the aim of this study because it allows the researchers to randomly assess the effects of music therapy on elderly people living in a nursing home. Randomization and single-blinding improve the reliability of results due to the elimination of potential bias among participants.
Sample
The study participants were 105 elderly people living in a Turkish nursing home. However, ultimately, 64 participants met the inclusion criteria, and thus the final sample size was 64. The inclusion criteria included elderly people living in a nursing home with the capability to cooperate, communicate, and agree to take part in the study. Any participant with hearing or visual loss was excluded from the study. There was no need to carry out sample size calculation as all elderly people living in the selected nursing home were considered for the study. The eligible 64 participants were put into two groups – 32 for music therapy intervention and 32 for the control group.
Data Collection
One of the data that were collected in this study was depression levels among the participants. The Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) was used to collect this data. Depression scores were taken at baseline (week 0) before the intervention group was allowed to listen to music for three days in a week for eight weeks. Post-test depression scores were then taken and used for data analysis.
Data Analysis
Data were analyzed statistically using SPSS, Chicago, IL for windows, version 21.0 (Gök Ugur et al., 2017). Through this method, the researchers first screened the data to ensure normality of distribution. The success of randomization was then assessed using chi-square and t-test. Changes in depression scores among all participants were then noted and compared using paired sample t-test. One of the lessons that I learned from this data analysis method is that it allowed for the comparison of the two groups using baseline characteristics to assess the success of randomization.
Limitations
One limitation of this study is that it was based on a limited number of participants drawn from one nursing home. Therefore, due to the small sample size drawn from a single facility, the researchers could not generalize the results in other set-ups among similar population cohorts.
Findings/Discussion
One major finding of this study is that music therapy alleviates depression among elderly. The difference between depression scores at the start of the study and after the study among the intervention group showed that music therapy alleviated depression among the participants. The control group did not have any significant change in depression scores after the 8 weeks of the study. Interestingly, I found out that music could be used as a therapy in the management of depression. This information is new to me, and hitherto I did not know that music could be useful in any way apart from entertaining people.
Reading Research Literature
It is important to understand research literature as it allows a person to know how a certain study was conducted, including the aims, design, data collection and analysis, and conclusions drawn. From completing this reading research literature activity worksheet, I have learned that the main points in a research article could be understood by going through the abstract.
Reference
Gök Ugur, H., Yaman Aktas, Y., Orak, O., Saglambilen, O., & Aydin Avci, I. (2017). The effect of music therapy on depression and physiological parameters in elderly people living in a Turkish nursing home: A randomized control trial. Aging & Mental Health, 21(12), 1280-1286. Web.