Subjective Evaluation of the Voice by the V.H.I. and Estimation of the Prevalence of Vocal Disorders among 723 Teachers

The literature shows that 20% of the teachers suffer from a vocal disorder. The researchers find frequent symptoms such as roughness, vocal fatigue and aggravation of the mean F0, peri-laryngeal pain and physical discomfort. Dysphonia is more frequent in female teachers. Age, years of experience, type of subject taught and environmental factors, vocal abuse, and stress have an impact on voice. They diminish the vocal performances of these professionals which has negative financial consequences.
In our study, the voice of 723 teachers were evaluated by means of the VHI (F: 634, M: 89), teaching in ordinary schools or in positive discrimination schools. Fifteen municipality in the Brussel area participated in the study.
We obtain a good test retest reliability for the whole group (F: 0,774 ; E: 0.749 ; P: 0.806 ; G : 0.836 – p>0.001).
The scores at the retest are significantly lower for the global scores and the three subscales (G p<0.001, F p<0.001 ; E p=0.003 et P p<0.001). Intra-scale correlation is high (F versus E : 0.434 ; F vs P :0.455 ; E vs P : 0.527).
The prevalence of vocal disorders was computed with regard to past ENT and speech pathology history and actual treatments, it was evaluated to 10,5%. Teachers who had been consulting an ENT or a speech language pathologist had higher scores at the global VHI. The elder the subjects are and the more teaching experience they have, the lesser they report vocal disorders (p=0.026 et p=0.013). The variables sex (p≥ 0.063), subject taught (p≥ 0.468), smoking (p=0.757), type of school (p≥ 0.867) and class grade (p≥ 0.212) do not have a significant impact on the VHI scores.