Parental awareness of vocal hygiene in children in Malta

Abstract

The encouragement and implementation of vocal hygiene with children is vital for the prevention of voice disorder development. Poor awareness and practice of vocal hygiene in children is a common finding amongst parental populations. This is also a leading cause for a lack of voice therapy referrals. This study aimed to investigate the levels of vocal hygiene awareness in parents of children aged 2-11 years old in Malta. Furthermore, the potential reasons as to why there are a lack of children with dysphonia aged 2-11 years old referred for voice therapy in Malta were explored. An online parental questionnaire was completed by 60 parents of children aged 2-11 years old who do not attend voice therapy, to aid with the establishment of the levels of awareness of vocal hygiene in parents of the local general public. Questions were on general demographics, knowledge of, attitude towards, and practice of vocal hygiene with children. Additionally, 30-minute-long semi-structured interviews were carried out with Professional Lead of the Speech and Language Centre and the President of the Association of Speech and Language Pathology, in order to investigate the potential reasons why there is a lack of children attending voice therapy within each sector locally. The questionnaire results demonstrated that participants had fair levels of vocal hygiene awareness, positive attitudes, and adequate levels of practice, but significant gaps in their knowledge and misconceptions were evident. The interviewees expressed that a limited number of clients attending voice therapy locally may be due to a lack of awareness of vocal hygiene amongst parents of children aged 2-11 years old. The professionals urged for vocal hygiene awareness to be spread to combat this, and hence, an outcome of the present study was to develop a draft set of vocal hygiene guidelines for parents. The study implies that vocal hygiene awareness amongst local parental populations must be increased, in light of the misconceptions held surrounding the topic. This will allow for parents to be better equipped for the prevention, earlier detection and treatment of voice disorders in children.