23.7. 1993 Vitoria-Gasteiz / Spain - World Federation of Music Therapy

actively and happily involved in an energetic action
song. Later on when this same child was very ill and
rable to move she requested that this videotape be
shown to her parents. The child was obviously greatly
relieved to be able to help her parents focus on her
former energetic self rather than on her present state.
Barbara Griessmeier also made use of videotape to try
to reassure children about some forms of frightening
medical interventions such as epidural injections. She
showed a video of a child breaking out into song during
this procedure which greatly reassured other children
who needed these injections. (Griessmeier 1991).
Music therapists have also made use of videotapes for
research purposes. Sessions can be viewed again and
again by any number of people which allows the
analysis of the data to be relatively objective. This
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means that observers can "practice" viewing video
tapes until they reach a high enough percentage of
agreement for their findings to be considered as reliable
data for research purposes. It also enables findings to
be revised at a later stage or to be re-used for other
types of investigations. For example, in 1986 I
completed a research project where we used video
recordings to compare the effectiveness of music
therapy to that of play activities with a group of adults
with severe learning difficulties. (Oldfield 1990). Later
on, I re-used the same videotapes to analyse staff
behaviours in the sessions and to evaluate a music
therapy assessment procedure. (Oldfield 1993).
Finally, it must be mentioned how useful it is to use
videotapes for students on clinical placements.
Students' interventions with clients can be analysed in