title: Development of the Music Therapy Assessment Tool for Advanced Huntington's Disease: A Pilot Validation Study.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Case studies of people with Huntington's disease (HD) report that music therapy provides a range of benefits that may improve quality of life; however, no robust music therapy assessment tools exist for this population.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  Develop and conduct preliminary psychometric testing of a music therapy assessment tool for patients with advanced HD.
  
  
  METHODS
  First, we established content and face validity of the Music Therapy Assessment Tool for Advanced HD (MATA-HD) through focus groups and field testing. Second, we examined psychometric properties of the resulting MATA-HD in terms of its construct validity, internal consistency, and inter-rater and intra-rater reliability over 10 group music therapy sessions with 19 patients.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The resulting MATA-HD included a total of 15 items across six subscales (Arousal/Attention, Physical Presentation, Communication, Musical, Cognition, and Psychological/Behavioral). We found good construct validity (r ≥ 0.7) for Mood, Communication Level, Communication Effectiveness, Choice, Social Behavior, Arousal, and Attention items. Cronbach's α of 0.825 indicated good internal consistency across 11 items with a common focus of engagement in therapy. The inter-rater reliability (IRR) Intra-Class Coefficient (ICC) scores averaged 0.65, and a mean intra-rater ICC reliability of 0.68 was obtained. Further training and retesting provided a mean of IRR ICC of 0.7.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Preliminary data indicate that the MATA-HD is a promising tool for measuring patient responses to music therapy interventions across psychological, physical, social, and communication domains of functioning in patients with advanced HD.
authors.affiliation: Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability/Queen Mary University, London Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University & The Royal Academy of Music Aarhus/Aalborg, Denmark julian.okelly@elft.nhs.uk.
authors.forename: Julian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: O'Kelly
authors.affiliation: Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability/Queen Mary University, London Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University & The Royal Academy of Music Aarhus/Aalborg, Denmark.
authors.forename: Rebeka
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bodak
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D017144:Focus Groups; D006801:Humans; D006816:Huntington Disease / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009147:Music Therapy / Q000379:methods; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*
keywords: Huntington’s disease; assessment tool; music therapy; validation