Lyric analysis research in music therapy: Rationales, methods and representations

Abstract

Interest in clients' lyrics has burgeoned in music therapy research. Lyric analyses extend understanding of what is important in clients' lives and substantiate song writing's utility in therapeutic and supportive care. A comparison of nine methods of lyric analysis indicate similarities and differences, namely in whether analyses were predominantly inductive or deductive, included numeration, and types of processes used to enable rigour. The postulation that researchers' methods and backgrounds affect findings' representations was also examined through a grounded-theory-informed analysis on lyrics already examined from a phenomenological perspective. Emergent differences illustrate how the ..