Screening for voice problems in school-age children : a comparison between teacher, parent and speech therapist reports

Abstract

This study investigated untrained parents and teachers’ ability to detect voice disorders in children by comparing their judgments with experienced speech therapists’ judgments. Parents and teachers of 64 Cantonese-speaking primary-one students completed a screening questionnaire for each of their own child or student. The questionnaire comprised three parts: 1) perceptual rating of eight voice quality parameters, 2) overall severity rating, and 3) decision on referral for follow-up. Four experienced speech therapists not knowing the students made judgments using the same questionnaire based on recorded voice samples of passage reading of students. Results revealed poor correlations between parent and speech therapist, as well as between teacher and speech therapist. Percentage of exact agreement was not high between parent and speech therapist, as well as between teacher and speech therapist. The results suggest that parents and teachers may not provide reliable perceptual judgments of children’s voice, compared with that made by speech therapists, and not identify and refer dysphonic cases very accurately.