How Can We Help? Wellbeing Interventions for Choral Music Ensembles

The research design is experimental mixed-methods, designed to determine the effectiveness of specific breathing and mindfulness techniques and specific emotion regulation techniques. These techniques are hypothesized to be useful in reducing anxiety and improving overall emotion regulation and wellbeing when integrated into choral music ensemble rehearsal practices, with additional determinations made regarding the effectiveness of these techniques in improving the quality of musical performance. This project incorporates techniques many music educators already employ, but with a better understanding of the psychology involved and specific wellbeing goals, to measure the effectiveness of these interventions and provide both evidence of effectiveness and a standard way to provide training on these interventions to music educators.

Participants are middle school and high school students in grades 6 through 12 who are currently enrolled in a choir class in Fort Bend ISD, Texas. One high school and one middle school campus will serve as a control group, with that group only taking the pre-test and receiving no interventions, and a second high school and middle school will serve as the primary experimental study sites. Individual schools were chosen due to administration and choral music educators who support educational research, with the experimental school sites and control school sites as closely matched demographically as possible, with all 4 sites having strong choral music programs. The experimental middle school is the experimental high school feeder, and the control middle school is the control high school feeder.

The instrument for the initial pre-test survey includes 21 items on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from "A bit like me" to "A lot like me" in three categories: Emotion, Music and Emotions, and Music and Anxiety, along with basic demographic information. Student information was anonymized by identifying individuals exclusively by choir folder number, to correlate pre- and post-test data. Example survey items include "I know what to do when I feel a difficult emotion." and "I have had a strong emotional reaction to one or more songs we have performed or sung in choir." This 21-item rating scale was pilot tested in an educational methods survey design course. The pre-test survey also included questions from the GAD-7, WEMWBS, and DERS-SF. The pre-test survey will be administered to both the control group and the experimental group.

The post-test survey contains all questions from the pre-test survey, with an additional five rating scale questions and one open-ended question for participants to add information regarding anxiety, positive emotions, emotion regulation, and the intervention techniques in their own words. This survey will be given only to the experimental group and will be administered twice: once immediately after the intervention, and once a week later.

Participants and their parents will self-identify willingness to participate in a follow-up interview on the consent/assent form, with two to three participants per class period selected at random by folder number from the self-identified willing participants. These interviews will be scheduled at the end of the initial research administration day to occur one week later at the follow up, will be approximately 15-20 minutes long, and will be conducted immediately after the second administration of the post-test. The parents of the minor participants will be invited to join the interview either via zoom or in person and have the option of their choir director attending the interview in their place. Parents and participants can opt out of the interview at any time with no penalties, with one or two extra participants selected on a stand by basis per class in case of absence or the choice to opt out of the interview.