Dissertation - World Federation of Music Therapy

Limitations of the study are discussed in section 8.3, also including critical comments
from the participants. The development of new theoretical ideas based on the results is
addressed in section 8.4, including also an appraisal of the multiple method design
used in the study. Clinical applicability of the findings is discussed in section 8.5, and
directions for future research are given in section 8.6. This final discussion chapter
focuses more on meta reflection and consideration of limitations, clinical applicability
and potential future research to avoid extensive repetition of specific discussion
relating to results found in earlier chapters.
9.1 Findings
The main question of this study was: What is the influence of ten individual BMGIM
sessions on mood and quality of life in cancer survivors? Results of the quantitative
and the qualitative investigations undertaken to answer the question are summarized
separately, based on the sub-questions and hypotheses addressed in the study.
9.1.1 The efficacy of BMGIM in cancer rehabilitation
The first subquestion was: Can ten BMGIM sessions improve the mood of the
participants? This subquestion was tested by the HADS questionnaire, with four
hypotheses stating that participants would report reduced anxiety and depression at
post-test and follow-up compared with pre-test. The results reported in section 5.1
showed that the BMGIM series reduced the reported anxiety in five of the six
participants, with a significant effect found from pre-test to follow-up (p = .045), and
with a very large treatment effect at both post-test (ES = 1.09) and follow-up (ES =
1.33). A similar effect on depression was not found, however effect size calculations
suggested a treatment effect over time for these participants (ES = 0.72 at follow-up).
One important aspect of these results is that the participants’ pre-test scores on
anxiety were much higher than their depression scores. Only one of the six
participants was within the “normal band” of the HADS anxiety subscale at pre-test,
and she (ESMA) was the one whose score did not decrease. Five of the six
participants were within the “normal band” of the HADS depression subscale at pre-
test, and the score of the three participants with the highest depression pre-scores all
decreased at post-test and further at follow-up (table 5.2). Therefore the participants in
this study reported anxiety as a much more severe problem than depression, yet it was
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