The quality of life of adults who stutter and adults with voice disorders in Malta

Abstract

Literature in this study has shown that both stuttering and voice disorders can impact on the quality of life (QOL) of an adult. These have shown that voice disorders seem to have a highly negative impact on adults’ social functioning and physical health whilst stuttering seems to have a highly negative impact on adults’ emotional and psychological health, in which all studies reported anxiety in their participants. The purpose of this study was to measure, explore and compare the quality of life of adults with stuttering and adults with voice disorders in Malta. This research aimed to adopt a mixed-method approach, however, was forced to take a quantitative approach after no participants were interested in taking part in an interview. The modified ’Questionnaire to assess quality of life of people who stutter’ (Bajaj et al., 2014) was used to assess QOL of adults with stuttering whilst the modified ’36-Item Short Form Survey Instrument’ was used to assess the QOL of adults with voice disorders. These were administered to adults who were at least 18 years of age and must only have either stuttering or a voice disorder. This research strived to achieve a sample size of around 13 participants for both groups, however, beyond the researcher’s control, this was not achieved. Independent analysis of the results show that stuttering impacted all domains, however speech related fear and anxiety and interpersonal and social relationships were the most negatively impacted. On the other hand, voice disorders did not impact on all domains, however the most impacted was interpersonal and social relationships. Comparison between the two disorders shows that both disorders affected job and employment, interpersonal and social relationships and the emotional domains. In both disorders, therapy was reported to have positive impacts. This study introduced the QOL in adults with voice disorders in Malta and added to the knowledge about the QOL in adults with stuttering. This study helps speech and language pathologists to provide more focused, relevant, effective assessments and interventions.