Female Teacher's Voice During Teaching

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Functional Voice Disorder
• Interventions: Behavioral: Voice therapy; Other: Control group; Behavioral: Voice therapy with carryover strategies

• Registration Number: NCT03382535
• Lead Sponsor: University of Oulu

Brief Summary

Two voice therapy methods are compared. Activity noise levels and vocal load of teachers during teaching in primary school classrooms are evaluated. Acoustic and Workshop Interventions are implemented in order to reduce noise level during lesson.

Detailed Description

Due to the voice disorders, teachers are a major customer group for voice therapy. The main part of the study is comparison of two voice therapy methods.

There are several factors in the classroom that increase teacher's risk of voice disorders. One of the most significant is high noise level during lessons. This study explores the noise conditions the teachers are working in and how these conditions are related to the voice parameters and symptoms.

Finally, the study aims to determine whether classroom noise level can be lowered by improving classroom acoustics and by noise reducing workshops for teachers and pupils.

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2009-12-07
• Primary Completion: 2014-12-20
• Study Completion: 2016-06-14
• Status Verified: 2017-12
• Study First Submitted: 2017-12-01
• Study First Submitted QC: 2017-12-18
• Last Update Submitted: 2017-12-18
• Study First Posted: 2017-12-26
• Last Update Posted: 2017-12-26

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: Female
• Target Recruitment: 54

Inclusion Criteria

• Female teachers or teachers of special needs children from elementary schools
• Voice symptoms and willingness to participate in voice therapy
• Mother tongue Finnish
• No hearing loss, no need to use a hearing aid
• Non-smoking
• No neurological diseases
• No voice therapy during past year
• Successful phoniatric examination with rigid laryngoscopy or nasal endoscopy

Exclusion Criteria

• Mother tongue other than Finnish
• Need to use a hearing aid
• Need for medical treatment in the larynx
• Abnormalities of the larynx
• Vocal cord paresis
• Laryngitis
• Posterior hypertrophy

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Voice therapy	Voice therapy	An individually tailored voice therapy where the order and length of voice treatment methods will depend on the nature of each subject's voice problems. The intervention will take eight weeks and average of eight sessions (a' 45 min).
Control group	Control group	No intervention during eight weeks since this group will act as a temporary control group. After eight weeks, half of the participants in this group will be provided with Voice therapy and half with Voice therapy with carryover strategies.
Voice therapy with carryover strategies	Voice therapy with carryover strategies	A voice therapy as described above and an enhanced carryover program. By carryover we mean the process of extending new vocal skills outside the clinic. It includes supplementary tasks and reminders that will be tailored individually out of those direct and indirect methods that the subjects have adopted during therapy sessions. Additionally, the teachers will be doing vocal warm-up and relaxation exercises together with their pupils int the beginning and in the middle of a school day. The intervention will take eight weeks.

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
The change of the well-being of the teachers' voice.	Up to one week before the interventions, up to one week after the interventions, 6 months after the interventions, 1 year and 2 years after the interventions and up to one week after the control time (concerning control group).	Subjective evaluation.Data collected with a questionnaire (Voice Activity and Participation Profile, VAPP) from the participants, answers given on a visual analogical scale (VAS) of 100 mm (0 = no disorder, 100 = extreme disorder).