Effectiveness of Musical Training in Children From Low Income Families

Effectiveness of Musical Training in the Improvement of Psychological Well-being and Quality of Life of Children From Low Income Families

This study aims to examine the effectiveness of musical training in promoting happiness and quality of life of preschool children from low-income families.

Participants in the experimental group will attend a weekly 1-hour musical training lesson for 12 weeks conducted by the Music Children Foundation. While participants in the waitlist control group received the same training after the experimental group had completed the intervention.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Child
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: musical training

Detailed Description

Children from low income families generally suffer from hard conditions,such as poor living conditions, inadequate nutrition, and delay in accessing health care services. Such problems may made children suffer from developmental problems and malnutrition and to have a lower level of intelligence and difficulties in language comprehension, which may not only have profound impacts on children's physical well-being, but on their psychological well-being as well. Musical training is considered to have potential for promoting psychological well-being among children mostly because music is found to be important to a child's early psychological development. A growing number of educators and researchers suggest that, of all the stages of life, infancy may be the time when music has the most important impact on an individual. Babies hear language long before they are able to comprehend it. The quality and the quantity of what is unconsciously absorbed in infancy relates directly to later development. Musical training has been used for various purposes such as improving language development, self-expression, memory skills, concentration, social interaction, fine motor skills, listening, problem-solving, teamwork, goal setting, and coordination. More importantly, when a child learns to sing and play music, other areas of development - creativity, family bonding, self-esteem, confidence, emotional development - are also positively impacted.

Nevertheless, although musical training is popular and is considered to be a beneficial intervention in the promotion of psychological well-being, longitudinal studies that examine the efficacy of music-making in children from low-income families are limited. Importantly, there is to date no study that examines the effects of musical training on enhancing the psychological well-being among these children. There is an imperative need for rigorous empirical scrutiny of the effectiveness of musical training in promoting the psychological well-being of children from low-income families. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine the effectiveness of musical training in promoting happiness and quality of life of preschool children from low-income families.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 171
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• China
  • Hong Kong, China
    • The University of Hong Kong

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 3 years to 6 years (Child)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• be aged from 3 to 6 years,
• be able to communicate in Cantonese,
• be from low-income families; that is, less than half the median monthly household income or recipients of Comprehensive Social Security Assistance.

Exclusion Criteria:

• children who had studied or were studying (at the time of the intervention) a musical instrument
• children who were receiving other community services at the time of the intervention,
• children with chronic illness or identified cognitive and learning problems.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Supportive Care
• Allocation: Non-Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Single

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Experimental; Participants in the experimental group will receive weekly one-hour lessons on musical training for 12 weeks, conducted by the Music Children Foundation. The Music Children Foundation is a non-governmental organization established by a group of professional musicians with the objective of transforming children's lives and instils positive values in the entire community through music. It aims to provide free musical training to low-income children and children with chronic diseases, including those with Down's syndrome, mucopolysaccharidoses, skeletal dysplasia and visual impairment.	Behavioral: musical training; The subjects in the experimental group will receive weekly one-hour lessons on musical training for 12 weeks, conducted by the Music Children Foundation.
No Intervention: Wait-list control group; Participants in the waitlist control group will receive the same training after the experimental group had completed the intervention.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
The change of quality of life from baseline at 12 weeks follow-up between intervention and control group.	The subjects' quality of life will be assessed at 12 weeks after starting the intervention, using the Chinese version of the Paediatric Quality of Life Inventory 4.0 Generic Core Scale (PedsQL 4.0). The parents will be asked to fill in this questionnaire for their children. The PedsQL is designed to measure children's healthrelated quality of life. It comprises 23 items rated on a 5-point Likert scale. These items are categorised into four domains: physical functioning (eight items), emotional functioning (five items), social functioning (five items) and school functioning (five items). The total possible range of scores is from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating better quality of life.	12 weeks follow-up

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Quality of life at baseline between intervention and control group.	The subjects' quality of life will be assessed at the baseline, using the Chinese version of the Paediatric Quality of Life Inventory 4.0 Generic Core Scale (PedsQL 4.0) The parents will be asked to fill in this questionnaire for their children. The PedsQL is designed to measure children's healthrelated quality of life. It comprises 23 items rated on a 5-point Likert scale. These items are categorised into four domains: physical functioning (eight items), emotional functioning (five items), social functioning (five items) and school functioning (five items). The total possible range of scores is from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating better quality of life.	baseline
Happiness at baseline between intervention and control group.	The subjects' happiness will be assessed 12 weeks after starting the intervention, using the Visual Analog Scale. The children will be asked to rate their average level of happiness in the last week from zero (not happy or sad) to ten (extremely happy), with higher scores representing higher level of happiness.	baseline
The change of happiness from baseline at 12 weeks follow-up between intervention and control group.	The subjects' happiness will be assessed 12 weeks after starting the intervention, using the Visual Analog Scale. The children will be asked to rate their average level of happiness in the last week from zero (not happy or sad) to ten (extremely happy), with higher scores representing higher level of happiness.	12 weeks follow-up

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: The University of Hong Kong
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Ho Cheung William Li, The University of Hong Kong

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Ho LLK, Li WHC, Cheung AT, Xia W, Ho KY, Chung JOK. Low-income parents' perceptions of the importance of a musical training programme for their children: a qualitative study. BMC Public Health. 2020 Sep 25;20(1):1454. doi: 10.1186/s12889-020-09568-7.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): March 1, 2017
• Primary Completion (Actual): November 30, 2017
• Study Completion (Actual): February 28, 2018

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: May 3, 2016
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: May 3, 2016
• First Posted (Estimate): May 5, 2016

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): June 1, 2018
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: May 30, 2018
• Last Verified: May 1, 2018

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: PhD_2

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: NO

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No