The purpose of this preliminary study was to assess the effectiveness of an online training program on rating the voice quality features breathiness and roughness. The participants for this study were 30 graduate students enrolled in a Voice Disorders course. The training program consisted of a pre-test, six training modules, and a post-test. The pre-test and post-test had the participants rate 12 voice samples for both breathiness and roughness on a seven-point scale from normal to severe. The first two training modules had participants determine the presence or absence of voice disorders. The next two modules had participants rating blocks of voice samples for breathiness or roughness on the seven-point scale. The final two modules had participants rate both breathiness and roughness in sets of voice samples. Participant ratings were compared to ratings by a panel of experts to determine the accuracy. The effectiveness of the training program was assessed by comparing the participants accuracy at rating breathiness and roughness for the pre-test and post-test items using two-tailed matched-pair t-tests. The t-tests showed that the participants improved on both measures, breathiness (t(29) = −6.12951, p 0.001) and roughness (t(29) = −8.49487, p 0.001). These preliminary results indicate the effectiveness of the training program with this group. Further testing of the program with different participant groups is needed.
Raskin et al. (Wed,) studied this question.