Content Analysis of Cultural Competency Based Sessions Presented at American Music Therapy Association National Conferences

Those in the helping professions, such as therapy and education, actively strive to become aware of their bias, human behavior, and personal limitations. They also attempt to understand the worldview of their diverse clients and learning appropriate and culturally sensitive intervention strategies and skills when working with culturally diverse clients. A Conceptual content analysis approach was used to examine cultural competency-based sessions presented at American Music Therapy Association National Conferences between the years of 2010 and 2017. More specifically, the researcher explored the following question: Do AMTA conferences provide an adequate amount of sessions on cultural competency related to multicultural languages, ethnicity, and gender? Results showed a total of 1671 sessions were presented at AMTA National Conference between 2017-2017. Of those sessions, 59 (3.5%) were cultural competency-based sessions presented on multicultural languages, ethnicity, gender, or general cultural competency within the field of music therapy. Between 2010-2017, 11 sessions were presented on cultural competence related to ethnicity, nine sessions presented on cultural competence specifically related to gender, one session presented on cultural competence related to multicultural languages, and 36 sessions presented on cultural competence as it relates to the field of music therapy.