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The lived experience of the adolescent listening to preferred music
Thesis   Open access

The lived experience of the adolescent listening to preferred music

Michael J. Mahoney
Master of Arts (M.A.), Drexel University
Aug 2010
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/etd-3561
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Abstract

Teenagers Music therapy Listening Music
The purpose of this phenomenological research study was to gain knowledge about the lived experience of normal adolescents listening to their favorite music. This was an initial inquiry into the music listening experiences of four normal teenagers from the Philadelphia, PA area, with the purpose of providing information for clinicians about how a teen client's favorite music can be incorporated into clinical treatment and what sort of information this can yield about the music listener. Through open-ended interviews, co-researchers disclosed thoughts, feelings, body responses and other responses, revealing that the each participant has a music listening experience particular to him or herself. There were similarities among the participants as well, though these should not be considered trends across the general adolescent population. While listening to favorite music, all participants enjoyed fond memories of friends and family while considering their values and feeling an improvement in mood. All participants projected their own feelings onto the music, and used descriptions for the music that reflected this. Notably, all the participants in this study used the lyrics in different ways from each other. Recommendations were made for future research to which knowledge from this study could be applied to developing a system for classifying music listening types. This system could be used by music therapists to improve the quality of treatment provided to teen clients.

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