The theoretical part of the master's thesis deals the field of voice, voice disorders and factors which impact the occurrence of voice disorders. I focused on vocal professionals, and I especially emphasized teachers as vocal professionals. I also emphasized occupational disorders and voice care, namely voice hygiene and its significance. Furthermore, I touched upon various studies, done worldwide and in Slovenia, centred on voice disorders among teachers as well as voice hygiene.
The empirical part of the thesis focuses on the acquaintance with voice care or voice hygiene among primary and secondary school teachers. Research points to the fact that, while not acquiring knowledge of vocal hygiene during their formal education, pedagogical workers are the most commonly affected group with voice disorders and one of the most at-risk populations regarding the occurrence of voice problems. Therefore, my master's thesis focuses specifically on the field of voice hygiene and the awareness of factors which affect voice quality. By asking them questions about vocal hygiene, I also want to make teachers and professors more aware of the importance of getting acquainted with voice hygiene and encourage them to consider guidelines for voice care.
I used an anonymous questionnaire on the level of knowledge of various factors which impact or do not impact voice, according to the authors Kovačić and Buđanovac. For individual claims regarding factors which could potentially affect voice, teachers indicated whether they found each claim true, false or stated "do not know." Based on the research, it was found that a group of 150 primary and secondary school teachers answered 23 statements correctly in 66%. Although 81% of teachers completed the pedagogical study programmes, only 8 had lectures on vocal hygiene during their study. The teachers who completed pedagogical study programmes had significantly worse results in solving 3 claims in the questionnaire and had a worse overall result than those who did not complete pedagogical study programmes (p = 0.005). Teachers who received information on voice care at any stage in their career were statistically significantly more successful in solving 4 claims, and their overall result was statistically better than the one from the opposite group (p = 0,000). This was also confirmed by a significantly lower number of "do not know" answers. We found a distinction between primary and secondary school teachers only within 2 claims, but this did not represent any significant difference in the overall result of the questionnaire. The teachers with more than 20 years of experience were significantly more successful with solving 4 claims and statistically had a significantly better overall result (p = 0.004), which was also confirmed by the correlation coefficient. Female participants displayed significantly better knowledge of voice hygiene than male participants (p = 0,000). Teachers displayed approximately equal knowledge of the impact of dietary habits and voice habits on voice itself.
All the obtained results indicate that there is an enormous need to introduce training in voice hygiene and proper use of voice during study or at least after employment, as this indirectly affects the reduction of voice disorders among teachers. Furthermore, the obtained results should encourage concern in speech therapist and other professionals in order to help teachers and other vocal professionals to become more aware of the importance of voice hygiene.
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