2008 Volume 29 Issue 1 Pages 86-94
Teachers belong to the group of professional voice users who often suffer from voice disorders. A reduction of the voice capacity can impede or stop the exertion of their profession. One reason for a significantly increased prevalence of voice problems can be poor room acoustical conditions in the class rooms. About the half of the teachers of a secondary modern school in Aachen were investigated with respect to their voice status by using phoniatric, logopedic and objective voice analysis methods. The prevalence of voice problems in this group was found to exceed previous studies where subjective voice quality was rated. Four rather reverberant and loud class rooms in that school were analysed using measurements of the reverberation time, T30, and the speech transmission index, STI. In a further part of this joint project the change of voice quality during the teachers’ working day was analysed. Two of the four rooms were acoustically optimised. Members of two groups of teachers with and without voice problems were recorded before and after teaching in either one of the acoustically poor rooms or one of the newly renovated rooms. The results indicate statistically significant differences between the groups of subjects with respect to one or more voice parameters. Healthy subjects are less affected by unfavourable room acoustical conditions than subjects with voice problems.
