Influence of choral singing on the voice-related quality of life of public health service users

Abstract: PURPOSE: to investigate the voice-related quality of life of participants in a singing group organized by public health system professionals. METHODS: the study was conducted with 86 individuals of both genders, of which 46 were part of the control group, and 40 the study group, whose members participated in a singing group. Participants completed the questionnaire Voice-Related Quality of Life validated in Brazilian Portuguese. To verify the difference between the groups' averages we used the nonparametric Mann-Whitney test, with significance < 0.05. RESULT: the age averages of the groups were 58.95 years for the control group and 60.82 years for the study group, with no statistical difference between the averages. Both the total score and those related to each area separately, proved very similar among groups, and there was no significant difference found (p = 0.9295). In addition, it has been verified that the length of stay in the Encanto group did not influence the outcome of the scores. CONCLUSION: there was no significant difference between the scores of the groups, which may have been influenced by the fact that both have presented scores within the normal range. Similarly, the scores were not differentiated by length of stay in the Encanto group, which may be related to the antagonistic influence caused by the presbylarynx process, because of the predominantly elderly population. However, further studies are needed.

摘要：
研究目的：调查由公共卫生系统专业人员组织的歌唱团体参与者的嗓音相关生活质量（Voice-Related Quality of Life）。
研究方法：本研究共纳入86名男女受试者，其中对照组46人，干预组（参与歌唱团体的受试者）40人。所有受试者均完成经巴西葡萄牙语本土化验证的嗓音相关生活质量问卷。为检验两组间的均值差异，本研究采用非参数曼-惠特尼（Mann-Whitney）检验，设定显著性阈值为p<0.05。
研究结果：对照组与干预组的平均年龄分别为58.95岁与60.82岁，组间年龄均值无统计学差异。两组的问卷总得分及各维度单独得分均极为接近，未发现显著统计学差异（p=0.9295）。此外，研究证实，在Encanto歌唱团体的参与时长并未对问卷得分产生影响。
研究结论：两组受试者的问卷得分无显著差异，这可能与两组得分均处于正常范围有关。同理，参与Encanto歌唱团体的时长亦未对得分产生区分作用，这或许与本研究以老年人群为主体，受老年喉（presbylarynx）病理过程的拮抗影响有关。但仍需开展进一步的相关研究。