Effects of Professional Vocal Hygiene Education on Vocal Hygiene Knowledge of Actors

Voice production is a complex mechanism, and the primary tool of the population of professional voice users requires special care. Hence, one area of learning provided by speech and language pathologists to this population is vocal hygiene. The current study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of vocal hygiene education on actors' knowledge. In this semi-experimental study of one-group clinical trials, 50 actors (29 males and 21 females aged 18-50 years) were selected based on available sampling. Participants were asked to complete the "assessment of actors' vocal knowledge" questionnaire. During 4 sessions lasting 60 minutes each, the participating actors were trained on the vocal hygiene package. One week after the last training session, participants were again asked to complete the questionnaire. Data was analyzed using SPSS software version 21, and indicators of descriptive statistics were analyzed. The mean score of voice abuse and non-abusive behaviors, which was 23.34 before training with the vocal hygiene package increased to 28.56 after education, a statistically significant change (p <0.001). The level of knowledge of participants on the mechanism of phonation increased after education from an average score of 10.12 to an average score of 11.21 (p <0.001). The mean score of knowledge of larynx pathology after education rose from 16.58 to 21.44, a significant change (p <0.001). The provided vocal hygiene educational package increased the actors' knowledge of the mechanism of phonation, voice abuse and non-abusive behaviors, and the functional and structural disorders of the voice.