Correlation between stress and voice disorders in kindergarten teachers and teachers

Glas je važan svim ljudima, ali je neophodan alat svakog vokalnog profesionalca. U posebno ugroženu skupinu pripadaju odgojitelji i učitelji zbog svakodnevnog obilnog korištenja glasa u neadekvatnim uvjetima, u najčešćem slučaju, bez edukacije o pravilnoj upotrebi glasa. Postoje mnogi rizični čimbenici za razvoj poremećaja glasa, između kojih se ističe stres, a budući da su prosvjetna zanimanja jedna od stresnijih, u ovom istraživanju ispituje se povezanost stresa i vokalnog zamora kod učitelja i odgojitelja. Cilj ovog istraživanja je ispitati znakove vokalnog zamora te emocije na radnom mjestu kod učitelja i odgojitelja te utvrditi povezanost između stresa i vokalnog zamora kod navedene dvije struke. U istraživanju je sudjelovalo 120 odgojitelja i učitelja. Podaci su prikupljani u dvije faze. Prvo su ispitanici ispunjavali upitnike Indeks vokalnog zamora i Upitnik emocionalne dobrobiti na poslu na radionicama „Zdrav glas za sve nas“ na Edukacijsko-rehabilitacijskom fakultetu u Zagrebu, korištenjem penkale i papira, a u drugoj fazi, zbog globalne epidemije COVID-19, ispunjavanjem istih upitnika, ali putem elektroničke pošte i ispunjavanjem upitnika u programu MS Word, na internetskoj aplikaciji Google Docs ili su ih isprintali te ispunili penkalom, fotografirali ispunjene upitnike i na kraju poslali odgovore natrag elektroničkom poštom. Prikupljeni podaci statistički su obrađeni računalnim programom IBM SPSS Statistics 23.0. Rezultati su pokazali da nema statistički značajne povezanosti između rezultata na JAWS upitniku te na VFI upitniku. Potrebno je provesti još istraživanja na ovu temu s većim brojem ispitanika te s ujednačenim radnim i životnim uvjetima svih ispitanika.Voice is important to all people, but it is a necessary tool for every vocal professional. Kindergarten teachers and teachers belong to a particularly vulnerable group due to the daily abundant use of voice in inadequate conditions, in most cases, without education on the proper use of voice. There are many risk factors for the development of voice disorders, among which stress stands out, and since educational occupations are one of the more stressful, this study examines the association between stress and vocal fatigue in kindergarten teachers and teachers. This research aims to examine the signs of vocal fatigue and emotions in the workplace in teachers and kindergarten teachers and to determine the correlation between stress and vocal fatigue in these two professions. 120 kindergarten teachers and teachers participated in the research. Data were collected in two phases. First, the respondents filled in the Vocal Fatigue Index and the Job-related Affective Well-being Scale at the „Healthy Voice for All of Us“ workshops at the Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences in Zagreb, using a pen and paper, and in the second phase, due to the global COVID-19 epidemic, by filling out the same questionnaires, but by e-mail and by filling out questionnaires in MS Word, on the internet application Google Docs or they printed them out and filled them with a pen, photographed the completed questionnaires and finally sent the answers back by e-mail. The collected data were statistically processed by the computer program IBM SPSS Statistics 23.0. The results showed that there was no statistically significant correlation between the results on the JAWS questionnaire and the VFI questionnaire. It is necessary to conduct more research on this topic with a larger number of respondents and with uniform working and living conditions of all respondents