Observing in music therapy: a practical experience of music therapy assessment

Assessment practices in music therapy involve procedures where the music therapist prepares, gathers information, interprets, analyses, makes decisions and communicate results on within the music therapy process. There are four main types of assessment practices in music therapy: reviewing, interviewing, observing and testing. Observing is careful, close examination of an object, process, or other phenomenon for the purpose of collecting data about through a direct observation or using video analysis. This workshop will provide experiences and practices on how to apply observational assessment in music therapy considering direct observation and video observation. This workshop will focus on the basic principles for observation assessment in music therapy, selecting videos from the music therapy process for observation assessment and also how to frame the focus, duration and objectives for the observation. This workshop will also present some basic considerations on the use of ELAN software for video analysis and will present basic knowledge on how to carry out observations in the phenomenological perspective and in on applied behavior analysis (ABA).The use observational assessment practices in music therapy is focused on the need to obtain singular information about the client in different moments of the clinical or group of clients in the music therapy process This workshop encourages clinicians to consciously use different practices of observation (based on the application of different assessment tools) to personalize the process of collecting client’s data as part of quality assurance and professional ethical consideration.