Acoustic Characteristics of Voice in Teachers and Nonteachers

Teachers are professional voice users, and the vocal demands in the teaching profession can be considered unique. All teachers will wish to possess a voluminous, strongly-carrying voice that can be maintained for a prolonged time. This necessitated the need to understand and document the voice-acoustic characteristics of teachers.

The specific objectives were to (a) investigate the acoustic characteristics of teachers' voices, (b) compare voice acoustic characteristics between female and male teachers, and (c) compare acoustic characteristics of voice between teachers and nonteachers.

Four hundred thirty-nine individuals congregated into two groups. Group 1 had 264 female teachers (mean age: 36.8 years) and 42 male teachers (mean age 36.8 years) with a minimum of 5 years of teaching experience. A hundred females (mean age: 37.3 years) and 33 males (mean age: 36.1 years) adults not indulging in additional, prolonged use of voice were in group 2.

Sustenance of vowel /a/ for 3 seconds at a comfortable pitch and loudness followed by a monologue on "My school" for 1 minute were audio-recorded at the locations of the participants. Multidimensional Voice Profiles and Real Time Pitch were used to analyze the phonation and monologue samples, respectively.

Revealed that most F0 and its related measures, short- and long-term frequency perturbations were higher in female compared to the male participants. The majority of the acoustic parameters were higher in teachers compared to nonteachers of both sexes.

The results, in general, confirmed a few evinced findings in females and males, strengthening the nature-controlled biophysical influence on voice. A few acoustic measures discerned voices of teachers and nonteachers and also females and males in teachers. Nonteachers of both sexes showed better acoustic characteristics of voice against teachers signifying that the extended and prolonged voice use, an occupational demand of the teaching profession, led to vocal loading affecting the acoustic characteristics of teachers' voices.