Pre-internship Fears of Music Therapists

This study examined pre-internship fears of music therapy majors. Additional analysis included comparison of pre-internship fears of music therapy majors with pre-internship fears of music education majors. Subjects for this study were music therapy/music education majors at a large southeastern university (N = 61; N = 32) who were surveyed during the year prior to their internship. Utilizing identical procedures, each subject was asked to list the 3 greatest fears that they had concerning their internship. Two independent evaluators then classified the perceived fears based on a taxonomic structure developed during the initial study on pre-internship fears of music education majors. Reliability for the classification of pre-internship music therapy fears was.97. Ranking reported fears revealed a hierarchy of pre-internship fears and provided comparisons between the two populations. Analysis of data indicated that the music therapy interns listed "general preparation/being prepared" as their primary fear followed by issues relating to "failure/not cut out for therapy." The next most frequently noted fears related to concerns about "internship placement" and concerns about the "physical environment" (money, moving, housing, etc.). Music therapy subject responses were also examined in relationship to the responses of music education subjects. Subject responses revealed a very low fear concerning "discipline" for the music therapy majors, yet this category was the highest listed by the music education seniors. "Failure/not being cut out for teaching/therapy" was expressed as a concern with the next highest frequency by the education 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 teacher/placement" and "students not learning/clients not responding" also registered somewhat differentiated responses with therapy majors evidencing more concern when compared to the music educators.