Care for Music
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Care for Music - an ethnography of music in late life and end of life settings
IRAS ID
269504
Contact name
Tia DeNora
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Exeter
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 9 months, 1 days
Research summary
This research will explore community music therapy and musical engagement in scenes of care in late life and end of life settings. It will be sited in two UK care homes and one UK hospice and will be mirrored by a Norwegian study set in and around a hospital and hospice (separate Norwegian ethics application for those is being sought following the required Norwegian procedures).
We are using ethnographic methods of data collection which involve participant observation (written up as detailed field notes), interviews, photography, audio and video recording, and informal conversations with all participants. These methods allow us to gather data to address important, and under-researched, questions about how real time musical engagement, embodied and non-verbal practices enter into the broader patterns of social life and social care in these settings in ways that have an impact on quality of life. There are no quantitative measurement tools or methods capable of addressing these important research questions. Observations will consist of 350 hours in each site (n=3) over a period of 24 months. 20 short ethnographic interviews will be conducted with participants (residents where appropriate, care staff, visitors, family) in each site (n=3).
This data will be analysed using a suite of bespoke analytic procedures that are relevant to the socio-musical processes involved. The first phase of analysis will make use of modified grounded theory to code field notes and interview transcripts, along with the music therapy ‘index’ to explore the micro features of socio-musical interaction. We will also produce descriptive statistics from the playlist histories of the audio-devices used to access residents’ favourite music as associated with their ‘Music Mirror’ (a record of key life experiences and associated music compiled for the project). The music therapy index is a detailed, split-second inventory of audio and visual recordings so as to examine the micro-processes of musical engagement through its various inter-linked channels: musical [rhythm, pitch, style, genre], audio [background sounds, bodily sounds], material [use of instruments, the build environment and how it is made use of by all participants], verbal [words, para-linguistic features such as attempts to use words, quasi-verbal communication], embodied activity [gesture, posture, comportment, facial expressions, movement styles]).
The second phase of analysis will employ Ansdell and DeNora’s ‘musical event’ scheme (DeNora 2003; DeNora 2013; Ansdell and DeNora 2016; DeNora and Ansdell 2017) so as to be able to trace the ways that music and past musical practices are drawn into social/embodied interaction in real time and drawn on into future interactions in ways that shape the cultures of care in the sites, as well as the personal identities, memories and capacities of individuals within those sites.
REC name
London - Camberwell St Giles Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/LO/1965
Date of REC Opinion
23 Dec 2019
REC opinion
Unfavourable Opinion