University of Twente Student Theses
Classical music in the waiting room of an ambulant mental healthcare setting
Vogelsmeier, L.V.D.E. (2014) Classical music in the waiting room of an ambulant mental healthcare setting.
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| Abstract: | Introduction: Ambulant mental healthcare implies spending some time in a waiting room, where anxiety and stress regarding the consultation are likely to build up: feelings that counteract therapeutic progress. Changing the ambience of the waiting room by using the concept of healing environments from the medical sector seems to have a favorable effect on the patient’s well-being. Research stresses that classical music turned out to have those favorable effects, independent of the preference for this genre. Method: Within the scope of a Bachelor thesis at the University of Twente, an experiment on the favorable effects through classical music was conducted at Dimence, a mental healthcare institute in Almelo. Independent of the classical music preference, it was expected that the classical music positively influenced the patients’ states of stress and anxiety, and their perceived attractiveness of the waiting room and the quality of Dimence. Patients were assigned to either the experimental condition (classical background music) or the control condition (unchanged environment). After at least five minutes of exposure in the waiting room and before the consultation started, the participants got a questionnaire containing primary questions (semantic differentials for all four measurements and furthermore VAS scales for an additional measure of stress and anxiety) and secondary questions (over patient characteristics, demographical data, and classical music preference). The total sample size consisted of 76 participants. Analysis: The data was analyzed with multivariate and univariate analyses of (co-) variance in order to control for confounders and to see possible main effects of the condition and the potential moderating effect of classical music preference. No significant differences between the two conditions could be found regarding the stated hypotheses. The preference did not moderate any of the results but had a significant main effect on the VAS anxiety scale. Discussion: Possible reason for the results was most probably an inappropriate waiting-room to conduct the research regarding the unquiet atmosphere and the entrance hall character. Additionally, an unmeasured underlying bias because of different group characteristics seemed to counteract finding potential effects of classical music. Future research can build on those limitations and suggestions for improvement of the study to conduct further research on music as a favorable ambient feature in mental healthcare. Keywords: healing environment, mental healthcare, classical music, waiting room |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Clients: | Dimence, the Netherlands |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 77 psychology |
| Programme: | Psychology BSc (56604) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/65816 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
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