The Influence of Smoking on Voice Quality in Female Undergraduate Students

The aim of this paper is to examine the influence of smoking & nicotine on the voice quality of female students at the Faculty of Special Education & Rehabilitation. Seventy-nine female university undergraduates (aged 19-27) were examined. Acoustic analyses were done with the EZ Voice program for measuring voice characteristics. The following variables were measured: frequency of fundamental tone (F0), maximal & minimal F0, range of F0, median F0, jitter, & shimmer. The analyses were obtained by using the program Statistica for Windows, Version 4.5. Differences between the group of smokers & the nonsmokers were calculated by t-test. The results of the acoustic analyses & t-test showed that smokers & nonsmokers differ according to the following variables: frequency of fundamental tone, maximal fundamental tone, & median of fundamental tone (results on these variables were significantly lower for the smoker group). The results of correlation matrices showed a correlation between the acoustic measuring area & variables describing age, years of singing, number of cigarettes smoked in one day, & years of smoking. The more cigarettes smoked in one day (ie, the more time spent smoking), the lower the fundamental tone. 2 Tables, 1 Graph, 12 References. Adapted from the source document