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Purpose: This article presents the development of the Consensus Auditory-Perceptual Evaluation of Voice (CAPE-V) following a consensus conference on perceptual voice quality measurement sponsored by the American SpeechLanguage-Hearing Association's Special Interest Division 3, Voice and Voice Disorders. The CAPE-V protocol and recording form were designed to promote a standardized approach to evaluating and documenting auditory-perceptual judgments of vocal quality.
Method: A summary of the consensus conference proceedings and the factors considered by the authors in developing this instrument are included.
Conclusion: The CAPE-V form and instructions, included as appendices to this article, enable clinicians to document perceived voice quality deviations following a standard (i.e., consistent and specified) protocol.
Key Words: Consensus Auditory-Perceptual Evaluation of Voice, voice, voice assessment
The Consensus Auditory-Perceptual Evaluation of Voice (CAPE-V) is a clinical and research tool developed to promote a standardized approach to evaluating and documenting auditory-perceptual judgments of voice quality. The tool was created as a direct outcome of the Consensus Conference on Auditory-Perceptual Evaluation of Voice, held in June 2002 and sponsored by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association's (ASHA) Special Interest Division 3, Voice and Voice Disorders and the University of Pittsburgh. The purpose of this article is to document the development of the CAPE-V protocol and form, and provide a rationale for each of the elements included in the protocol.
The consensus conference brought together an international group of voice scientists, experts in human perception, and speech-language pathologists to explore solutions to a long-standing need in clinical voice pathology: to apply scientific evidence about psychophysical measurement to the clinical practice of judging auditory-perceptual features of voice quality. (See Appendix A for a list of conference participants.) Following 2 days of presentations and discus- sion, recommendations from these participants informed and guided the development of the CAPE-V tool. The CAPE-V authors (the authors of this article) approached the task of psychophysical measurement and the scaling of voice qual- ity by adhering to the consensus opinions of scientists and clinicians. From its inception, the CAPE-V was intended to become a standardized protocol, useful to clinicians and researchers, that incorporates multiple recommendations for best practices in assessing perceived abnormal vocal qual- ity (Barkmeier, Verdolini, & Kempster, 2002). The word "standardized" is used throughout this article to refer to a procedure...