A SURVEY OF BACKGROUNDS, ATTITUDES, AND EXPERIENCES OF NEW MUSIC-THERAPY STUDENTS

Students of music therapy are a diverse group. They are drawn to the s tudy of music therapy for a variety of reasons, come with varied music al backgrounds and talents, and have definite expectations of the prof ession. Although music therapy educators are well aware of the charact eristics of students in their own programs, a large-scale description of music therapy students' backgrounds, attitudes, and expectations ha s not been done. The purpose of this study was to provide a descriptio n of new music therapy students as a group, including demographic data , academic and musical backgrounds, their prior knowledge of music the rapy, factors influencing choice of major and choice of school, and ge neral professional goals. Surveys eliciting structured and unstructure d responses were returned by 297 music therapy students from 33 colleg es. Free-form responses were analyzed into representative categories. The data indicate some clear patterns and trends among music therapy s tudents and provide some insight into students' decisions regarding th e field of music therapy.