Summary
Rating scales to determine the severity of dysphonia have shown considerable inter-rater
variability. The objective of this study, therefore, was to investigate a more quantitative
measure to perceptually rate the severity of dysphonia. The study was conducted on
10 participants with abuse-related dysphonia in two conditions, spontaneous speech,
and paragraph reading. Four speech-language pathologists, who had experience with
voice disorders, and one trained student counted the frequency of the nondysphonic syllables during the above two conditions. The voice samples were both recorded and
transcribed for simultaneous analysis. All the recordings were randomized when presented
to the raters. The raters circled the nondysphonic syllables while listening to each participant's recording. The nondysphonic syllables were counted, and a percentage of dysphonic severity was calculated for
each participant to obtain a dysphonic severity percentage. Specific characteristics
(eg, breathiness, noise, strain) were not specifically addressed, as they were components
of the percentage of dysphonia obtained. The Cronbach's alpha revealed very high inter-rater
reliability and high correlations among the raters for both spontaneous speech and
paragraph reading, indicating reduced variability in raters' perceptions. This method
appeared to be a more quantitative measure of perceptual ratings than current scales,
which use general gradations of dysphonic severity. In addition, a naïve rater was
successfully trained to use this method. This technique has the potential to be used
in both pre- and posttherapy analysis, as well as during therapy, to determine progress.
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: July 21, 2009
Accepted:
December 3,
2008
Identification
Copyright
© 2010 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
