Reporting Guidelines for Music-Based Interventions Checklist: Explanation and Elaboration Guide

Sheri L. Robb ^1* Maya Story ^1,2 Elizabeth Harman ¹ Debra S Burns ³ Joke Bradt ⁴ Emmeline Edwards ⁵ Tasha L. Golden ⁶ Christian Gold ^7,8,9 John R Iversen ¹⁰ Assal Habibi ¹¹ Julene K Johnson ¹² Miriam Lense ¹³ Susan M. Perkins ¹ Stacey Springs ¹⁴

• ¹ Indiana University, Indianapolis, United States
• ² Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center, United States Department of Veterans Affairs, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States
• ³ University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, United States
• ⁴ Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
• ⁵ National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NIH), Bethesda, Maryland, United States
• ⁶ University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, United States
• ⁷ Norwegian Research Institute (NORCE), Bergen, Hordaland, Norway
• ⁸ University of Bergen, Bergen, Hordaland, Norway
• ⁹ University of Vienna, Vienna, Vienna, Austria
• ¹⁰ McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
• ¹¹ University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, United States
• ¹² University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States
• ¹³ Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States
• ¹⁴ Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

Background: Detailed intervention reporting is essential to interpretation, replication, and eventual translation of music-based interventions (MBIs) into practice. Despite availability of Reporting Guidelines for Music-based Interventions (RG-MBI, published 2011), multiple reviews reveal sustained problems with reporting quality and consistency. To address this, we convened an interdisciplinary expert panel to update and improve the utility and validity of the existing guidelines using a rigorous Delphi approach. The resulting updated checklist includes 12-items across eight areas considered essential to ensure transparent reporting of MBIs. Objective: The purpose of this explanation and elaboration document is to facilitate consistent understanding, use, and dissemination of the revised RG-MBI. Methods: Members of the interdisciplinary expert panel collaborated to create the resulting guidance statement.Results: This guidance statement offers: (1) the scope and intended use of the RG-MBI, (2) an explanation for each checklist item, with examples from published studies, and (3) two published studies with annotations indicating where the authors reported each checklist item.Broader uptake of the RG-MBIs by study authors, editors, and peer reviewers will lead to better reporting of MBI trials, and in turn facilitate greater replication of research, improve cross-study comparisons and meta-analyses, and increase implementation of findings.