The Usability and Acceptability of the mHealth "Health and Voice" for Promoting Teachers' Vocal Health.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the usability and acceptability of "Health and Voice" for the promotion of vocal health, and to analyze the same with sociodemographic data, work data, self-knowledge data on vocal care, voice disadvantage, and vocal fatigue symptoms in elementary school teachers.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

A cross-sectional observational study, with a sample of 277 elementary school teachers from a Brazilian capital. Teachers were invited to access, interact and evaluate the mHealth: "Health and Voice". The evaluation instruments were the questionnaire with information on socio-demographic and work data, the System Usability Scale (SUS), the questionnaire with questions about acceptability, the Voice Handicap Index Protocol (VHI-10), and the Vocal Fatigue Index Protocol (VFI). Descriptive and association analyses were performed by the Chi-square, Fisher exact, Mann-Whitney, and Wilcoxon tests (P ≤ 0.05) RESULTS: the mean SUS score was 81.9 points; the mean of the acceptability questions was 17.24; the VHI-10 was 6.96 points; the VFI was 21.11 points. Most participants rated the acceptability of mHealth as high. There was an association between acceptability and working in two shifts (P = 0.019); between acceptability and usability (P < 0.001); and between usability and self-perception of knowledge about voice care after using mHealth (P = 0.000). The activity perceived as most important was guidance on voice care.

CONCLUSION

"Health and Voice" is a vocal guidance tool for teachers that promotes vocal health. It has high usability and acceptability by elementary school teachers. Self-reported knowledge about vocal care increases after its use and those who evaluate the technology with high acceptability are 3.6 times more likely to also classify it with high usability.