Vocal loading among day care center teachers

Abstract

Day care center teachers suffer from voice disorders more often than nurses do. Several risk factors may increase voice disorder prevalence of day care center teachers. The risk factors can be bound to their job content and manner of working i.e. having to raise their voice to attract the attention of the children and to offer them the possibility to perceive spoken information, or to the environment i.e. poor acoustics and excess background noise. The purpose of this study was to measure some of the risk factors for voice disorders of day care center teachers and of a control group (nurses); these were speaking times and speech levels. The background noise levels during activities and RASTI-values (Rapid Speech Transmission Index), i.e. measures of the acoustics of rooms, were also measured at the day care centers. It was found that day care center teachers use their voices more and with higher levels than nurses do. It was also found that the background noise levels are high, which is partly due to the poor acoustics (lack of sufficient attenuation) of the rooms. Control of excess background noise is of utmost importance both for speakers' speech production as well as children's speech recognition.

How Do Teachers With Self-Reported Voice Problems Differ From Their Peers With Self-Reported Voice Health?

“…If the social support at the work-place is low, this further increases the risk. However, the active or passive behavior of 20 the employee needs to be taken into account. An active behavior gives rise to "good stress", predicting motivation, new learning behavior, and new coping strategies [43].…”

Child Voice and Noise: A Pilot Study of Noise in Day Cares and the Effects on 10 Children's Voice Quality According to Perceptual Evaluation

“…14 It has been proposed that this structural difference may cause children to be more prone to tissue reactions because of vocal abuse. [15] and [16] In adult voices, high background noise levels have been found to influence several vocal parameters such as loudness, subglottal pressure, 17 fundamental frequency, [18], [19], [20], [21], [22] and [23] and voice quality. 24 Does the same pattern apply also for children?…”

Objective Measurement of Vocal Fatigue in Classical Singers: A Vocal Dosimetry Pilot Study

“…2 The question of work-related vocal loads causing vocal injury is increasingly being approached as an occupational safety and health (OSH) issue. 1,3 Most research on vocal fatigue has been conducted on teachers and daycare workers who, due to the vocal demands of their work and acoustically poor environments, injure their voices or acquire compensatory habits. Studies on teachers historically have combined fundamental frequency (F 0 ), voicing time, average sound pressure level (SPL) over a teaching day or a portion of a teaching day, and background noise levels.…”

“…8 Previously recorded objective measures of the effects of vocal loading have included pre/post loading changes in frequency (F 0 ) range, voice range profile, jitter, and changes in sound pressure level (SPL); vocal loading behaviors or factors previously measured include long-term average F 0 , average SPL, background noise levels, RASTI (rapid speech transmission index) values, signal to noise ratio and total voicing time. [3][4][5][6]9 Computer-based recording devices worn by subjects called "voice accumulators" 9, 10-11, 14 as well as portable audio recorders with one or more microphones 3,5 have been used to obtain data. Drawbacks of these devices have included a lack of ease of use for the subject, difficulty in eliminating background noise, insufficient memory for data storage, short battery life of the unit, high cost and low availability of the unit, and variable microphone stability.…”