Music making and wellbeing: A systematic review of methods, musical activities, and outcomes

Research on music making and wellbeing reports positive effects across psychological, physiological, and social dimensions. A closer look, nevertheless, reveals that most of these studies solely focus on group singing and define wellbeing in various and occasionally limited ways. This systematic review aimed at identifying the different research designs of quantitative studies in the field, structuring the musical activities, and summarizing the wellbeing outcomes. A comprehensive literature search in five databases resulted in a total of 50 papers that were included in the current review. Results showed that the majority of studies used quasi-experimental designs with active or passive control conditions. Group and individual singing were most frequently studied. As for psychological wellbeing, studies with positive or no evidence are nearly balanced, with the exception of choral studies in younger and middle-aged adults that predominantly provided positive evidence. Physiological wellbeing was measured mostly in singing activities with mixed results. Social wellbeing was primarily reported for group singing activities, with predominantly positive evidence. Taken together, this review underlines the need for including a wider range of music making activities in research on wellbeing, a careful selection of the respective research designs, and a balanced use of wellbeing measures.