Effects of VARK-informed guided music relaxation on state anxiety among college students

Objectives

Anxiety is common among college students, and improving individual engagement and immediate emotional outcomes within brief, low-burden psychological relaxation interventions is of considerable importance. The VARK (Visual, Aural, Read/Write, Kinesthetic) framework describes individual preferences for receiving and processing information across visual, auditory, reading/writing, and kinesthetic modalities and provides an exploratory framework for tailoring guidance content in guided psychological relaxation. This study aims to examine the association between a guided music relaxation intervention designed according to VARK-related representational preferences and improvements in state anxiety among college students, to determine whether preference-congruent guidance provided additional benefits compared with preference-incongruent guidance, and to explore whether baseline trait anxiety moderated the intervention effect.