String Music Education Research: A Content Analysis of Peer-Reviewed Journals From 1990–2021

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify trends in string research published in peer-reviewed music education research journals between 1990 and 2021. String education research was defined as scholarly articles in which the purpose of the article pertained specifically to string education and/or at least 33% of the participants played bowed stringed instruments. Peer-reviewed journals were determined based on Hamann and Lucas's (1998) list of top-tier journals, Farmer and Kloss's (2022) quasi-replication of that study, a 2006 list compiled by a music education researcher, and an informal survey of music education faculty at a large midwestern university. The resulting list included the Journal of Research in Music Education, Psychology of Music, Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, Music Education Research, International Journal of Music Education, Research Studies in Music Education, Philosophy of Music Education Review, Journal of Historical Research in Music Education, and String Research Journal.For each journal issue, the researchers counted the total number of scholarly articles (N  = 4,727) and the total number of string education research articles (n  = 276). String education articles represented less than 6% of the total scholarly articles, or less than 5% without the String Research Journal. The method, instruments, participants, and topic of each string article were also recorded. Descriptive research methods were used most frequently, strings and violin were the most frequent instrument categories studied, university students were the most studied participant population, and musical training and skills was the most frequently investigated topic.