Focus Group Ratings and Discussions of Alaryngeal Communication Modalities: Preliminary Data on Employable Voice Attributes

Purpose:The purpose of this study was to investigate listener impressions of alaryngeal communication modalities, more specifically employable voice attributes.Expanding upon previous research that noted individuals to be likable and intelligent but not employable, this study was designed to capture information regarding modality, context, and characteristics.Methods: Forty-five individuals listened to 24 audio samples.Participants were provided a visual analog scale and instructed to rate their agreement on three statements.Additionally, participants were provided with an open text box to type any further thoughts regarding the stimuli.Lastly, focus groups were facilitated during which participants could openly share their thoughts.Results: Results demonstrated a significant difference between the communication modalities, with electrolarynx (EL) having the highest overall mean rating followed by tracheoesophageal speech (TES) and esophageal speech (ES).Spontaneous speech was rated significantly higher than the grandfather passage.A significant difference was observed between the three rating statements.Five thematic categories were developed to characterize the open-text responses and focus group discussion with nearly half of all open-text responses categorized as speech and voice attributes.Conclusion: Results from this study indicate EL rated more favourably than ES or TES, an agreement with results from previous studies using listeners outside of speech-language pathology.However, mean ratings for each modality did not extend much beyond the halfway mark, indicating the work that still needs to be done in understanding what makes a voice 'employable.'