Validation and cultural modification of Arabic voice handicap index

Abstract

The voice handicap index (VHI) is one of the most widely used instruments for measuring a patient's self-assessment of voice severity. In some ways, it reflects the patient's quality of life. Although it has been recognized and widely applied to populations in European countries and to English speaking populations, it has not been used in its present forms in the Arabic speaking countries due to the specific language constraints of Euro-American terminology. The purposes of this study were to generate an Arabic version of VHI, to assess its reliability, and to apply it to a wide variety of normal and dysphonic individuals of Arabic descent. The Arabic version of VHI was derived in the standard way for test translation. The translated version was then administered to 65 patients with voice disorders and 65 control subjects. Participants' responses were statistically analyzed to assess the validity, and to compare the pathological group with the control group. The Arabic VHI showed a significant high internal consistency and reliability (Cronbach's α = 0.97 and r = 0.89, respectively), high item-domain and domain-total correlation (r = 0.73-0.94). There was a statistically significant difference between the control and the voice-disordered groups (P < 0.001). The results of this study demonstrated strong internal consistency of the Arabic VHI. Thus, the Arabic version of VHI is considered to be a valid and reliable self-assessment tool for the severity of voice disorders in Arabic language speaking patients.

Laryngeal manual therapy palpatory evaluation scale: A preliminary study to examine its usefulness in diagnosis of occupational dysphonia

“…Observations described above are reflected in clinical practice, as people in the study group reported reduced voice-related quality of life in direct proportion to the increase in the severity of laryngeal tension. The conducted research is in accordance with the studies carried out in other institutions and indicates that apart from the self-reported physical discomfort within the vocal tract, the patients also experience a wide range of problems of psychosocial nature [23,24]. Furthermore, our studies have confirmed the correlation of the LMTPE scale results with the results obtained by means of methods commonly used in phoniatric practice, i.e., the aerodynamic parameter (MPT) and perceptual evaluation by the GRBAS.…”

Cross-Cultural Adaption and Translation of the Voice Handicap Index into Norwegian

“…Obtaining the diagnosis directly from a medical ENT department, and not via self-report from the patients, would have improved the design. Our study did not investigate test-retest reliability; however, this has been done in several other studies [11,12,14,15,16], which find good test-retest reliability for the different language versions of VHI.…”

“…However, studies have shown that the VHI often works well as a shortened questionnaire [5,11,12,13,14,15,16,17]. A shorter version of the VHI questionnaire could facilitate its use in practice.…”

“…The US VHI and the various European translations appear to be equivalent, suggesting that the results from the various published translations are comparable [17]. Current non-European translations include Brazilian Portuguese [11], Chinese [13] and Arabic [14]. A Norwegian translation [VHI-30(N)] is warranted.…”

“…Furthermore, the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality reported in 2002 that the VHI met stringent criteria for reliability, validity and availability of normative data [10]. The VHI has been translated into many different languages [11,12,13,14,15,16,17], and it has been validated by assessing equivalence of the European translation of the questionnaire to German, French, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Belgian and Swedish [17]. The US VHI and the various European translations appear to be equivalent, suggesting that the results from the various published translations are comparable [17].…”