This is a descriptive study to investigate the research-related activities and perceived
barriers to research utilization among music therapists in Korea. For the study, the online
survey link was e-mailed to music therapists who have completed professional music
therapy education courses. The questionnaire consisted of individual characteristics,
research-related activities, and perceived barriers to research utilization. To identify music
therapists’ perception of barriers to research utilization, the BARRIERS Scale(Funk,
Champagne, Wiese, & Tornquist, 1991) was used. The data from 160 respondents were
analyzed and the results were as follows. First, the level of active research-related
activities were low while the respondents involved a high degree of attendance at
academic conferences and experience of taking research courses. Second, a significant
difference was found between research-related activities and educational attainment,
working type, clinical experiences, and clinical setting. Third, the result from the
BARRIERS Scale indicated that Organizational and Communication factors are perceived
as most disturbing to utilize research in their clinical practice. The top 5 barriers were
‘the facilities are inadequate’, ‘absence of documentation to change practice’, ‘a linguistic
barriers to English’, ‘unclear implications for practice’, and ‘the results are regarded as
problem with generalization for clinical settings’. Fourth, there was a significantly
difference between educational attainment and Communication factor. Fifth, there was
significantly difference between the perception of barriers level and attendance of
academic conferences, publication in research articles, and frequency of reading Korean
articles. Last, those who had no experience with publishing the research and never to
read the English research articles were regard difficulty with understanding the research
reports written by English. These results suggest the need for self-training and
organizational education strategies to enhance the research utilization of music therapists
in Korea.