Pre-internship fears of music therapists

This study examined pre-internship fears of music therapy majors. Additiona l analysis included comparison of pre-internship fears of music therapy maj ors with pre-internship fears of music education majors. Subjects for this study were music therapy/music education majors at a large southeastern uni versity (N = 61; N = 32) who were surveyed during the year prior to their i nternship. Utilizing identical procedures, each subject was asked to list t he 3 greatest fears that they had concerning their internship. Two independ ent evaluators then classified the perceived fears based on a taxonomic str ucture developed during the initial study on pre-internship fears of music education majors. Reliability for the classification of pre-internship musi c therapy fears was .97. Ranking reported fears revealed a hierarchy of pre -internship fears and provided comparisons between the two populations. Ana lysis of data indicated that the music therapy interns listed "general prep aration/being prepared" as their primary fear followed by issues relating t o "failure/not cut out for therapy" The next most frequently noted fears re lated to concerns about "internship placement" and concerns about the "phys ical environment" (money, moving, housing, etc.). Music therapy subject res ponses were also examined in relationship to the responses of music educati on subjects. Subject responses revealed a very low fear concerning "discipl ine" for the music therapy majors, yet this category was the highest listed by the music education seniors. "Failure/not being cut out for teaching/th erapy" was expressed as a concern with the next highest frequency by the ed ucation majors and was rated quite high by the therapy majors. Fears about the "physical environment including money moving, etc." were quite high for the music therapy majors, yet these fears received very low ratings by the music education students. In addition, fears related to the "supervising t eacher/placement" and "students not learning/clients not responding" also r egistered somewhat differentiated responses with therapy majors evidencing more concern when compared to the music educators.