CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Quantitative Psychology and Measurement
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1552659
Reporting Guidelines for Music-Based Interventions Checklist: Explanation and Elaboration Guide
Provisionally accepted
Sheri L. Robb1*
Maya Story1,2
Elizabeth Harman1
Debra S Burns3
Joke Bradt4
Emmeline Edwards5
Tasha L. Golden6
Christian Gold7,8,9
John R Iversen10
Assal Habibi11
Julene K Johnson12
Miriam Lense13
Susan M. Perkins1
Stacey Springs14- 1Indiana University, Indianapolis, United States
- 2Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center, United States Department of Veterans Affairs, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States
- 3University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, United States
- 4Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
- 5National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NIH), Bethesda, Maryland, United States
- 6University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, United States
- 7Norwegian Research Institute (NORCE), Bergen, Hordaland, Norway
- 8University of Bergen, Bergen, Hordaland, Norway
- 9University of Vienna, Vienna, Vienna, Austria
- 10McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
- 11University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, United States
- 12University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States
- 13Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States
- 14Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
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Background: Detailed intervention reporting is essential to interpretation, replication, and eventual translation of music-based interventions (MBIs) into practice. Despite availability of Reporting Guidelines for Music-based Interventions (RG-MBI, published 2011), multiple reviews reveal sustained problems with reporting quality and consistency. To address this, we convened an interdisciplinary expert panel to update and improve the utility and validity of the existing guidelines using a rigorous Delphi approach. The resulting updated checklist includes 12-items across eight areas considered essential to ensure transparent reporting of MBIs. Objective: The purpose of this explanation and elaboration document is to facilitate consistent understanding, use, and dissemination of the revised RG-MBI. Methods: Members of the interdisciplinary expert panel collaborated to create the resulting guidance statement.Results: This guidance statement offers: (1) the scope and intended use of the RG-MBI, (2) an explanation for each checklist item, with examples from published studies, and (3) two published studies with annotations indicating where the authors reported each checklist item.Broader uptake of the RG-MBIs by study authors, editors, and peer reviewers will lead to better reporting of MBI trials, and in turn facilitate greater replication of research, improve cross-study comparisons and meta-analyses, and increase implementation of findings.
Keywords: Reporting guidelines, Music, Music Therapy, intervention, reporting quality Reporting Guidelines, guidance statement
Received: 06 Jan 2025; Accepted: 28 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Robb, Story, Harman, Burns, Bradt, Edwards, Golden, Gold, Iversen, Habibi, Johnson, Lense, Perkins and Springs. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Sheri L. Robb, Indiana University, Indianapolis, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.