Abstract
Summary
This is a brief account of a pilot study which was conducted in an attempt to discover which factors of voice quality were most likely, in the opinion of speech therapists, to require treatment, and the extent to which therapists agreed amongst themselves. Twenty-five raters comprising sixteen qualified therapists and nine third year students were asked to assess tape recordings in terms of nasality, pitch deviation, hoarseness, breathiness and stridency. The scores were entered by each rater on a chart drawn up for the purpose, and raters were invited to judge whether or not they considered the voices to be in need of therapy. Each aspect of voice quality was correlated to ascertain whether or not it was significantly related to therapy and certain aspects were intercorrelated to discover the degree of variance or agreement between raters.