Teacher students´ voice symptoms and their connection to the experienced psychosocial impact and the self-assessment of voice – a comparative study between training fields
Keywords:
assessment of voice, psychosocial impact of voice disorders, survey, teacher students, voice symptomsAbstract
The aim of this study is to investigate the prevalence of voice symptoms of teacher students of different subjects and examine the psychosocial harm caused to them by voice symptoms. In addition this study investigates how voice symptoms and psychosocial harm influences the assessment of one’s voice. Teaching of some subjects is more linked to vocal risk factors and voice symptoms are more common among teachers of certain substances. Previous studies have found that teacher students have more voice symptoms than other university students, but there has not been any comparative research about the differences between teacher students studying different subjects. Previous studies have found correlation between the amount of voice symptoms and the psychosocial harm, but there has not been any Finnish studies regarding the relationship between the two. A total of 190 students from all classes and training fields participated in the study. The data was gathered by electronic questionnaire, which consists of background information form and questionnaires about vocal symptoms (voice screening test) and the psychosocial impacts of voice disorders (VHI). The results show that voice symptoms are quite common among teacher students and about 40 % of them reported frequently occurring voice symptoms. However, one of the main discoveries of this study is that almost 90% of the students did not have notable psychosocial impacts and almost 80% actually considered their voice normal. This research shows that students can regard their voice normal despite the fact that they have voice symptoms. The amount of voice symptoms and psychosocial harm was equally high among students of all different subjects.
