A Shortened Version of the Children's Voice Questionnaire (CVQ-10): Development and Validation

OBJECTIVE: This study introduces a new 10-item, self-administered children's voice questionnaire (CVQ-10), designed to quantify children's voice handicap and assess its validity and reliability. STUDY DESIGN: Observational, prospective, cross-sectional study. METHODS: The 10 items that comprise the new CVQ-10 were extracted from the full CVQ. The selected items were chosen based on their Cohen's d scores. The new questionnaire was administered to 208 children (80 dysphonic and 128 nondysphonic), aged 6-17 years. In addition, the parents of these children completed the Pediatric Voice Handicap Index (pVHI) and a brief anamnesis questionnaire. Furthermore, after 2 weeks, a subset of 30 randomly selected children (15 dysphonic and 15 nondysphonic) completed the CVQ-10 again, to examine test-retest reliability. At that time, another subset of 30 children was randomly selected to complete the full CVQ questionnaire to evaluate validity. RESULTS: The CVQ-10 demonstrated high reliability (Cronbach's α = 0.94). Test-retest reliability yielded a Pearson correlation coefficient of r = 0.91 (P < 0.001). A highly significant group difference was found between the dysphonic and nondysphonic groups of children (t[206] = 17.00, P < 0.001), with a calculated cutoff of nine points. A significant positive correlation was found between children's subjective self-evaluation on the CVQ-10 and their parents' responses on the pVHI questionnaire (r = 0.766, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The CVQ-10 is shown to be a valid and reliable instrument. Data confirms its single factor contract. This demonstrates that children are capable of providing a reliable and consistent description of their subjective voice handicap. The CVQ-10 differentiates dysphonic from nondysphonic children and can serve as a brief and easy to-use instrument for evaluating dysphonic children in clinical and research settings.