The effectiveness of preventive voice therapy in teacher students

The aim of this study is to determine the vocal awareness and the effectiveness of preventive voice therapy among senior teacher students. Study design is between subjects prospective two sample dependent design. The total number of the participants is 26. Preventive voice therapy was implemented to 9 participants and Student Teacher Voice Handicap Questionnaire to 26 participants. Independent variables of this study are Voice Handicap Index (VHI), Student-Teacher VHI and Multi-Dimensional Voice Program (MDVP) measures; dependent variable is the effectiveness of preventive voice therapy. The study includes two phases: the first phase consists of the application of questionnaire; the second phase consists of ENT examination and the preventive voice therapy. Vocal awareness is evaluated by the Student-Teacher VHI and VHI; effectiveness of preventive voice therapy is evaluated by the acoustic parameter scores. The results of this study indicate that the student teachers who received and didn't receive voice therapy doesn't show significant difference in Student-Teacher VHI. Significant difference in VHI scores was observed within the group who received voice therapy; whereas no significant difference was observed in the group who didn't receive therapy. The pre and post acoustic measures of the therapy group shows statistically significant difference, thus the practice of voice therapy on student teachers is thought to be effective.