Analyzing the use of music, health and well-being terms in music education journals: an integrative review

Health and well-being appear to be a growing area of interest for music education researchers. It is unclear, however, if interest in matters of health and well-being is simply a manifestation of the COVID-19 pandemic, or if this interest is more long-standing, thus representing an expansion of disciplinary concern. Given that it is an educational rather than a health field, it is also unclear how health and well-being are mobilised in music education research. The purpose of this study was to assess the ways health and well-being-related terms (health, well-being, quality of life, wellness, flourishing) appear in music education research articles, drawn from four journals. Employing an integrative review method, this study presents an analysis of a corpus of 90 articles. Results indicate few differences between journals, suggesting relative coherence within the discipline. Notable findings include: an increase over time of target term presence and number of articles focused on music, health, and well-being; target term usage across countries of author-affiliation; keyword coherence; categories of research samples; and proportionate usage of the words health and well-being.