The effect of a prolonged and demanding vocal activity (Divya Prabhandam recitation) on subjective and objective measures of voice among Indian Hindu priests

Cross-Linguistic Adaptation of Vocal Fatigue Handicap Questionnaire into Kannada (VFHQ-K)

BACKGROUND

It is often considered appropriate to assess vocal fatigue using a self-reported tool or a subjective measure, as vocal fatigue is primarily described through self-reported symptoms. The vocal fatigue handicap questionnaire (VFHQ) is a self-rated questionnaire that addresses the concern of vocal fatigue in persons with voice disorders. Adapting and validating this questionnaire into the Kannada language can be helpful in assessing the physical, emotional, and functional effects of vocal fatigue among Kannada-speaking individuals.

OBJECTIVE

Adaptation and Validation of the VFHQ into the Kannada language.

STUDY DESIGN

A validation study.

METHOD

Initially, the VFHQ was translated into Kannada. The translated questionnaire was given to two SLPs and two Linguists for content validation and to assess the cultural and linguistic equivalency. 65 participants (34 males and 31 females) were diagnosed with voice disorders, and 65 participants who were age and gender-matched and had healthy voices were administered the Kannada version of VFHQ (VFHQ-K).

RESULTS

The results showed that the VFHQ-K had good test-retest reliability, internal consistency, and known groups' discriminative validity. The cut-off point of the VFHQ-K was equal to 26.50, indicating that the VFHQ-K had acceptable discrimination between the patients with and without dysphonia.

CONCLUSION

VFHQ-K is a valid, reliable, and sensitive questionnaire to assess the emotional, physical, and functional effects of vocal fatigue in the Kannada-speaking population.

Is Cepstral Peak Prominence a Measure of Vocal Fatigue in Temple Priests: A Pilot Study

PURPOSE

Considering cepstral analysis of voice as a measure of overall severity of dysphonia, we tried to investigate if these measures could be considered as a metric of vocal fatigue as well. Since voice quality changes are seen as a result of vocal fatigue, we wanted to find out if there were any correlations between the cepstral measures, vocal fatigue symptoms, and auditory perceptual evaluation of voice in professional voice users.

METHOD

The pilot study was conducted on 10 temple priests belonging to the Krishna Consciousness Movement. We conducted a pre-post voice evaluation, which included recording voices before the beginning of any temple preaching in the morning and after all the preaching sessions in the evening. The priests also filled in the Vocal Fatigue Index (VFI) questionnaire twice (morning and evening), and all the voice samples were analyzed for GRBAS (Grade, Roughness, Breathiness, Asthenia, and Strain voice quality) rating by speech language pathologists with voice expertise. Correlations were obtained between the acoustic measures, VFI responses, and auditory perceptual evaluations.

RESULT

The findings of our pilot study didn't show any correlations between the cepstral measures and the questionnaire responses or with the perceptual ratings. However, the cepstral measures were slightly higher for evening recordings than the morning recordings. Our participants did not experience or perceive any voice symptoms or vocal fatigue.

CONCLUSION

Despite more than 10 hours of voice use per day for over 10 years, our participants did not experience any voice symptoms or vocal fatigue. This finding indicates that there may be diverse reasonings and opinions about the occurrence of voice problems in various professional voice users. This is particularly because the participants' responses to vocal fatigue symptoms had more of a psychological explanation (faith, self-power, etc.) rather than any physiological changes in the vocal apparatus.

Adaptation and Validation of the Voice-Related Quality of Life Measure into Kannada

BACKGROUND

Earlier researchers have developed various objective tools to document the impact of dysphonia on the patient's daily living and quality of life. Of all these available tools, Voice Related Quality of Life (V-RQOL) is one of the essential self-reported tools to document the quality of life related to voice. Thus, developing the Kannada version of V-RQOL can be a useful tool in the clinical assessment of Kannada-speaking dysphonic patients.

OBJECTIVES

To translate the V-RQOL into Kannada and to evaluate the psychometric properties and the cut off scores for the Kannada version of the V-RQOL.

STUDY DESIGN

This investigation deployed a non-randomized, prospective standard group comparison.

METHODS

V-RQOL was translated to Kannada and was administered to 70 patients with voice disorders (42 males and 28 females) with a mean age of 43.2 ± 15.8 years, and 70 age and gender-matched participants with a clinically normal voice.

RESULTS

Spearman's correlation coefficient was more than 0.94 indicating a good test-retest reliability. Therefore, the Kannada version of VRQOL had a good level of reproducibility. The test also showed a Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.92, indicating a strong internal consistency of the Kannada version of VRQOL. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis revealed that the cut off score for the Kannada version of VRQOL was 93.75 indicating that Kannada version of VRQOL had an excellent construct validity.

CONCLUSION

The present study findings revealed that the Kannada version of VRQOL is a reliable, valid and sensitive self-assessment tool to document the impact of voice problems on the patient's quality of life.

Multiparametric analysis of voice following prolonged voice use and voice rest in teachers: evidence from discriminant analysis

PURPOSE

Even though recent investigations have used multiparametric protocol, the set of robust parameters in determining the effects of vocal fatigue and voice rest in teachers is not clear. The first objective of the study was to document the impact of prolonged voice use and voice rest on the subjective and objective voice parameters among Indian secondary school teachers. The second objective was to determine the set voice parameters sensitive to vocal changes resulting from continuous voice use and voice rest.

METHOD

The study included 15 male and 15 female secondary school teachers with a clinically normal voice and no history of voice disorders. Phonation samples were recorded in three different conditions, i.e., condition 1 (before voice use), condition 2 (following voice use), and condition 3 (following voice rest). The vocal Fatigue Index (version 2) was administered before the voice recordings in all three conditions. The objective parameters, namely fundamental frequency, range of fundamental frequency, jitter (%), shimmer (%), harmonic to noise ratio, and smoothened cepstral peak prominence, were extracted.

RESULTS

Results revealed that fundamental frequency, jitter, shimmer, Harmonic to noise ratio, and smoothened cepstral peak prominence were significantly different across the three conditions. The discriminant analysis revealed that only three parameters classified 98.3% of samples accurately between the three conditions.

CONCLUSION

Further research on the correlation between the other subjective and the objective parameters of voice after vocal fatigue would provide more penetrating and ample in-depth insights into the assessment and quantification of vocal fatigue.