Female Teacher's Voice During Teaching

NCT03382535 | Completed

• 1 other identifier: Ooulu
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 54
• Locations: 0 countries
• Sites: N/A

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.

Conditions

Functional Voice Disorder

Keywords

Voice disorder; Teacher's voice; Voice SPL (Voice sound pressure level); Voice F0 (Voice fundamental frequency); Voice therapy; Voice accumulator; Activity noise; Classroom

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (1)

• The change of the well-being of the teachers' voice.

  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).

  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).

Study Arms (3)

Voice therapy

ACTIVE COMPARATOR

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).

Behavioral: Voice therapy

Voice therapy with carryover strategies

EXPERIMENTAL

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.

Behavioral: Voice therapy with carryover strategies

Control group

OTHER

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.

Other: Control group

Interventions

Voice therapy BEHAVIORAL

Voice therapy with direct and indirect therapy elements.

Voice therapy

Voice therapy with carryover strategies BEHAVIORAL

Voice therapy with direct and indirect therapy elements and supplementary tasks and reminders.

Voice therapy with carryover strategies

Control group OTHER

No therapy during eight weeks. After the control period half of the group will be provided with Voice therapy and half with Voice therapy with carryover strategies.

Control group

Eligibility Criteria

• Sex: female
• Healthy Volunteers: No
• Age Groups: Child (0-17), Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)

You may qualify if:

• 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

You may not qualify if:

• 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

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Oulu: lead
• Tampere University: collaborator
• Oulu University Hospital: collaborator
• Umeå University: collaborator
• Sonvox AB: collaborator

MeSH Terms

Conditions

Voice Disorders

Interventions

Control Groups

Condition Hierarchy (Ancestors)

Laryngeal Diseases; Respiratory Tract Diseases; Otorhinolaryngologic Diseases; Neurologic Manifestations; Nervous System Diseases; Signs and Symptoms; Pathological Conditions, Signs and Symptoms

Intervention Hierarchy (Ancestors)

Epidemiologic Research Design; Epidemiologic Methods; Investigative Techniques; Research Design; Methods

Study Officials

• Sirpa M Pirilä, MA

  Ooulu

  STUDY CHAIR

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Masking: SINGLE
• Who Masked: PARTICIPANT
• Masking Details: Participants are not told what kind of a therapy they are receiving.
• Purpose: TREATMENT
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: SPONSOR

Model Details: Participants are randomly divided into three groups. Group 1: Voice therapy. Group 2: Voice therapy with carryover strategies (supplementary tasks and reminders). Group 3. Controls. No treatment during control period. After the control period participants are having Voice therapy or Voice therapy with carryover strategies.

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: December 1, 2017
• First Posted: December 26, 2017
• Study Start: December 7, 2009
• Primary Completion: December 20, 2014
• Study Completion: June 14, 2016
• Last Updated: December 26, 2017

Record last verified: 2017-12