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Trial registered on ANZCTR


Registration number
ACTRN12625000153415p
Ethics application status
Submitted, not yet approved
Date submitted
10/01/2025
Date registered
10/02/2025
Date last updated
10/02/2025
Date data sharing statement initially provided
10/02/2025
Type of registration
Prospectively registered

Titles & IDs
Public title
The impact of dance movement therapy on women with an experience of family and domestic violence: A controlled feasibility study
Scientific title
The impact of dance movement therapy on women with an experience of family and domestic violence: A controlled feasibility study
Secondary ID [1] 313678 0
Nil known
Universal Trial Number (UTN)
Trial acronym
Linked study record

Health condition
Health condition(s) or problem(s) studied:
Psychological well-being 336252 0
Condition category
Condition code
Mental Health 332922 332922 0 0
Other mental health disorders

Intervention/exposure
Study type
Interventional
Description of intervention(s) / exposure
This study aims to improve the trauma symptoms experienced by women with an experience of family and domestic violence (FDV) using dance movement therapy as the intervention.

A trauma and violence informed framework which was developed based on women’s and practitioner’s voices (Hegarty et al., 2017) will be used to guide service provision in this study. This will focus on the following: relationship building, integrated co-ordinated care, reflective system, and environmental scan.

Relationship building: This will focus on connecting with service providers as well as the potential participants before, during and after the study.
Integrated co-ordinated care:
The researcher and therapist will work closely with service providers (eg: understand referral pathways, knowledge of other existing services onsite etc)

Reflective system: Focus groups consisting of participants and service providers will be available at the end of the intervention to obtain feedback from both parties.
Environmental scan:
Each session will be regularly assessed to check for places for private conversations, safe spaces, and will allow for engage with participants on sensitive topics.

Approximate size of group session: Maximum of 8 participants each group.
Therapy schedule:
Intervention will be provided once a week for six weeks during the school term. Each session will last 60min. Participants will be encouraged to attend, however are able to choose not to do so. Attendance will be taken every session using an attendance checklist.

Participants will already be in pre-existing clusters (organizations) and will be randomized into treatment arms to an intervention or control wait cluster. At the end of the intervention period, an optional focus group will be offered to participants as well as sites to provide feedback on feasibility questions.

Intervention
Dance movement therapy intervention sessions will be based on the clinical implications for DMT for women survivors of trauma by Liang and Bryant (2024). The intervention will be delivered by a qualified dance movement therapist, who is also the researcher in this study. Each session will have the following elements: warm up for 10 mins to prepare the participants for the main theme. The warmups will consist of movements to ease the participants into the session, as well as a general check-in of their mood state for the day. Music will be used in conjunction with movement.

1)Group sessions will assist with witnessing, sharing movement and discussion (Koch, 2008; Mills & Daniluk, 2002) and to avoid dissociative symptoms and re-traumatisation (Koch & Weidinger-von der Recke, 2009).

2)Metaphors, imagery and symbolism will be used during dance and movement to help process difficult material safely and bypass intellectualisation (Mills and Daniluk, 2002).

3) Participants will be given as much autonomy as possible, which is in line with trauma-informed care (Hegarty et al., 2017) and will be encouraged to use choices regarding use of music, taking rests, based on their introspective bodily needs (Liang & Bryant, 2024).

4) Music will be used purposefully to create atmosphere and to set the scene (Liang & Bryant, 2024).

5) Participants will be led through simple exercises focusing on exploring simple movements that will access different emotions (eg: moving fast vs moving slow, moving with weight vs moving with lightness, moving in different directions etc). Participants will be invited to try simple movements and learn dance steps according to their physical and emotional abilities. The duration of the main theme will be around 30 mins.
Lastly, there will be a cool down and winding up of the session for 15min. The participants will be offered a chance to reflect on the session. The session will close with some relaxation breathing and quiet time. All participants will be provided with the choice to not participate in certain movements should they not wish to. The focus will be on creativity, joy and fun to help with therapy retention rates as well as processing heavier aspects of intervention (Mills & Daniluk, 2002).


References:

Hegarty, K., Tarzia, L., Rees, S., Fooks, A., Forsdike, K., Woodlock, D., Simpson, L., McCormack, C., Amanatidis, S. (2017). Women’s Input to a Trauma-informed systems model of care in Health settings: The WITH study. ANROWS - Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety. https://www.anrows.org.au/project/womens-input-to-a-trauma-informed-systems-model-of-care-in-health-settings/
Intervention code [1] 330273 0
Lifestyle
Intervention code [2] 330274 0
Behaviour
Intervention code [3] 330275 0
Treatment: Other
Comparator / control treatment
CONTROL PERIOD:
Control group will be receiving treatment as usual over an 6-week period while waiting for their intervention. This refers to the usual wellbeing groups that they choose to attend at their organizations, as well as engaging in any specific counselling provided by their organization.

After the experimental group ends intervention, the waitlist control group will then be invited to attend six weeks of intervention with a follow up and complete questionnaires during each session.
Control group
Active

Outcomes
Primary outcome [1] 340320 0
Change in trauma symptoms
Timepoint [1] 340320 0
Outcomes using PCL-5 will be measured during the following timepoints 1) Baseline ( week 0 ) 2)Immediately post intervention ( week 6) 3) 4 weeks and 8 weeks post-intervention completion
Secondary outcome [1] 443706 0
Expected composite outcomes will measure overall wellbeing in women. These include the changes in psychological, physical, social, emotional, cultural-aesthetic and behavioural characteristics in women.
Timepoint [1] 443706 0
Outcomes using DOF BREVE and DOF BREVE SR will be measured during the following timepoints 2)Immediately after every intervention session ( Week 1/2/3/4/5/week 6)
Secondary outcome [2] 443707 0
Acceptability of intervention by Service providers
Timepoint [2] 443707 0
After completion of intervention ( week 7 )
Secondary outcome [3] 444132 0
Validity of outcome measure tool ( DOB BREVE )
Timepoint [3] 444132 0
After completion of intervention ( week 7)
Secondary outcome [4] 444133 0
Recruitment rate of participants
Timepoint [4] 444133 0
Collected at Week 0.
Secondary outcome [5] 444423 0
Acceptability of intervention from participants
Timepoint [5] 444423 0
Post intervention ( week 7)
Secondary outcome [6] 444424 0
Attrition rates of participants
Timepoint [6] 444424 0
1)Week 0 ( total number enrolled ) 2) Immediately after every intervention session ( Week 1/2/3/4/5/week 6) 2)After completion of intervention ( week 7) 3) 4 weeks and 8 weeks post-intervention completion
Secondary outcome [7] 444425 0
Withdrawal rates of participants
Timepoint [7] 444425 0
1)Week 0 ( total number enrolled ) 2) Immediately after every intervention session ( Week 1/2/3/4/5/week 6) 2)After completion of intervention ( week 7) 3) 4 weeks and 8 weeks post-intervention completion

Eligibility
Key inclusion criteria
• Interested and available to attend dance therapy for six sessions.
• Females aged 18 years of age or above and are consumers of the organization participating in the study.
• Identify as someone who has had an experience of family and domestic violence,
• Able to provide informed consent.
• Willing to complete outcome measures pre and post treatment sessions.
Minimum age
18 Years
Maximum age
No limit
Sex
Females
Can healthy volunteers participate?
No
Key exclusion criteria
Insufficient command of English for basic communication with therapist
• Participants for which facility staff recommend that the program may not be appropriate risky


Study design
Purpose of the study
Treatment
Allocation to intervention
Randomised controlled trial
Procedure for enrolling a subject and allocating the treatment (allocation concealment procedures)
Sealed opaque envelopes
Methods used to generate the sequence in which subjects will be randomised (sequence generation)
Simple randomisation using coin-tossing
Masking / blinding
Open (masking not used)
Who is / are masked / blinded?



Intervention assignment
Parallel
Other design features
Phase
Not Applicable
Type of endpoint/s
Efficacy
Statistical methods / analysis
Statistical support has been obtained from University of Melbourne. Since this is a feasibility study, data will be analysed accordingly.

Demographic, recruitment, attrition and withdrawal data: Descriptive statistics will also be presented on recruitment and retention of participants in both groups, including possible reasons for dropouts at different stages.

Between group statistical analysis of PCL-5: ANOVA (Between EG & CG)

Within group of all participants (for data collected during all active intervention, meaning all EG)
DOF-BREVE & DOF BREVE SR: Triangulation of data between DOF-BREVE and DOF-BREVE SR Independent t-test; ANOVA with all 6 domains
If data is normally distributed, parametric test: t-test, ANOVA, Pearson’s correlation

Sample size calculation
Confidence level: 80%, standard deviation: 0.5, confidence interval: plus or minus 5%
Sample size formula: (z score x2) x std dev 1 (1-std dev) / confidence interval x 2

Sample size estimate: (1.28) x2 x 0.5 x (1-0.5) /(0.05) /2
equals to 0.64/ 0.025
equals to 25.6
Added 10% for attrition, and suggested sample size is 30

Focus Group: (Qualitative analysis)
All focus group interviews will be audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. MAXqda software will be used to analyse the sample. The interviews will be analysed using thematic analysis (Clarke & Braun, 2017)

References
Clarke, V., & Braun, V. (2017). Thematic analysis. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 12(3), 297–298. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2016.1262613

Recruitment
Recruitment status
Not yet recruiting
Date of first participant enrolment
Anticipated
28/03/2025
Actual
Date of last participant enrolment
Anticipated
24/04/2025
Actual
Date of last data collection
Anticipated
8/08/2026
Actual
Sample size
Target
30
Accrual to date
Final
Recruitment in Australia
Recruitment state(s)
WA

Funding & Sponsors
Funding source category [1] 318141 0
University
Name [1] 318141 0
University of Melbourne
Country [1] 318141 0
Australia
Primary sponsor type
University
Name
University of Melbourne
Address
Country
Australia
Secondary sponsor category [1] 320527 0
None
Name [1] 320527 0
Address [1] 320527 0
Country [1] 320527 0
Other collaborator category [1] 283354 0
Individual
Name [1] 283354 0
Dr Imogen Clark, University of Melbourne
Address [1] 283354 0
Country [1] 283354 0
Australia
Other collaborator category [2] 283355 0
Individual
Name [2] 283355 0
Professor Sabine Koch, Director Research Institute of Creative Arts Therapies, Alanus University, in Germany. She is also an honorary fellow at Creative Arts and Music Therapy Research Unit, University of Melbourne, Australia.
Address [2] 283355 0
Country [2] 283355 0
Germany

Ethics approval
Ethics application status
Submitted, not yet approved
Ethics committee name [1] 316787 0
University of Melbourne Central Human Research Ethics Committee
Ethics committee address [1] 316787 0
Ethics committee country [1] 316787 0
Australia
Date submitted for ethics approval [1] 316787 0
29/01/2025
Approval date [1] 316787 0
Ethics approval number [1] 316787 0

Summary
Brief summary
Trial website
Trial related presentations / publications
Public notes

Contacts
Principal investigator
Name 139010 0
Prof Sabine Koch
Address 139010 0
Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, The University of Melbourne AUSTRALIA Office: Building 862, Room 228, 234 St Kilda Rd Southbank VIC 3006
Country 139010 0
Australia
Phone 139010 0
+4915112957957
Fax 139010 0
Email 139010 0
sabine.koch@unimelb.edu.au
Contact person for public queries
Name 139011 0
Thilaga Letchumi, Sarunga Raja
Address 139011 0
Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, The University of Melbourne AUSTRALIA Office: Building 862, Room 228, 234 St Kilda Rd Southbank VIC 3006
Country 139011 0
Australia
Phone 139011 0
+61 413178137
Fax 139011 0
Email 139011 0
tsarungaraja@student.unimelb.edu.au
Contact person for scientific queries
Name 139012 0
Thilaga Letchumi, Sarunga Raja
Address 139012 0
Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, The University of Melbourne AUSTRALIA Office: Building 862, Room 228, 234 St Kilda Rd Southbank VIC 3006
Country 139012 0
Australia
Phone 139012 0
+61 413178137
Fax 139012 0
Email 139012 0
tsarungaraja@student.unimelb.edu.au

Data sharing statement
Will individual participant data (IPD) for this trial be available (including data dictionaries)?
No
No/undecided IPD sharing reason/comment


What supporting documents are/will be available?



Results publications and other study-related documents

Documents added manually
No documents have been uploaded by study researchers.

Documents added automatically
No additional documents have been identified.