Abstract

At an international level, it is recognized that transgender women experience psychosocial consequences daily due to their voice. In Chile, however, no background information can be found on this issue, making it necessary to collect data that allow verifying information from the international literature. Therefore, the objective of this work is to describe the vocal self-perception of a group of transgender women from the Metropolitan Region, according to the instrument Trans Woman Voice Questionnaire (TWVQ). For this, an observational, descriptive correlational, and cross-sectional study with a quantitative approach was carried out, which was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Medicine-Clínica Alemana Universidad del Desarrollo (GP-70/2018). Thirty transgender women participated, responding first to a medical history questionnaire and then to the TWVQ. The latter was analyzed based on the total score as well as its three items (anxiety and avoidance, vocal function, and vocal identity). The results show that vocal self-perception is affected first by the vocal function item, second by the anxiety and avoidance item, and finally by the vocal identity item, according to perceived difficulty. The data also provide preliminary evidence that vocal self-perception could be associated with attendance to a voice specialist and with the length of hormone therapy. Finally, this study provides an empirical way to analyze the TVWQ in detail, based on the proposal of three items.