Comments From the Editor: Understanding Significance and Meaningfulness

Abstract

Welcome back! In this issue of Update, we have seven outstanding articles, including one research-to-resource article, two reviews of literature, three studies, and one extending-the-discussion article. The research-to-resource article by Fisher addresses the male voice change. The topics of the reviews of literature are music achievement goals by Tan and Sin, and music teacher recruitment by Robison, Williams, Hoffman, and Eros. The topics of the studies include an investigation of the music performed at jazz band music performance assessments in Florida by Warnet, a description of a service-learning band project by Sindberg, and a survey of string musicians' use of drone accompaniment by Zabanal. After the Zabanal article, we have Part 1 of an extending-the-discussion article by Gardner on string tuning. You can also find a podcast discussing the results and implications of Zabanal's study at https://journals.sagepub.com/page/upd/podcasts. In this issue of Update, I am going to highlight an important topic for research in the field of music education: meaningfulness of research findings. While music education researchers tend to be solid in their understanding of significance testing in quantitative studies, statistical significance may not translate to the idea that research differences are meaningful in practical settings.