• Korean Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.77-88
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• 2003

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to compare reliability and validity of three Korean versions of the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia scale and to confirm the most reliable and validated Korean translation of the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale for both clinical and research purpose in Korea. The first one was a Korean version of the 20-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale developed by Lee YH et al in 1996 which was designated as TAS-20K(1996) in this study. This scale had a problem with one item due to the cultural difference regarding the word 'analyzing' between western culture and Korean culture. The second one was the revised version of TAS-20K(1996) on that point by Lee YH et al in 1996 without validation which was designated as TAS-20K(2003) in this study. The third one was a 23-item Korean version developed by Sin HG and Won HT in 1997, which was somewhat different from the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale(TAS-20) in the number of total item, the content of some items and the scoring method. This scale was designated as S-TAS here. Methods: 408 medical students were tested with one scale composed of all the different items randomly arranged from the three versions. We evaluated goodness-of-fit and Cronbach $\alpha$ coefficients of three scales for reliability. We used confirmatory factor analysis to compare validity. Results: TAS-20K(2003) showed that it had better internal consistency than TAS-20K(1996), which implied that the cultural difference should be considered in the Korean translation. Both TAS-20K(2003) and S-TAS replicated three-factor structures and had adequacy of fit, good internal consistency and acceptable validity. However, S-TAS had one item with poor item-factor correlation and didn't show high correlation between item 2 and factor 1 as before in 1997. Conclusion: Although S-TAS had added 3 items and changed the content of two items, it didn't show better reliability and validity than TAS-20K(2003). Therefore it is proposed to use TAS-20K (2003) as the Korean version of the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale(TAS-20K) for international communication of results of Alexithymia research. It has good internal consistency and validity and maintains original items, the same construct and scoring method as the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.51-61
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• 2019

The purpose of this study was to develop a smartphone based voice therapy program for patients with voice disorders. Contents of voice therapy were collected through analysis of mobile contents related to voice therapy in Korea, experts and users' demand survey, and the program was developed using Android Studio. Content needed for voice therapy was collected through analysis of mobile contents related to voice therapy. The user satisfaction evaluation for application was conducted for five patient with functional voice disorders. The results showed that the mobile contents related to voice therapy in Korea were mostly related to breathing, followed by voice and singing, but only 13 applications were practically practiced for voice therapy. Expert and user demand surveys showed that the patients and therapists both had a high need for content that could provide voice training in places other than the treatment room. Based on this analysis, 'Home Voice Trainer', an smartphone based voice therapy program, was developed. Home Voice Trainer is an application for voice therapy and management based on Android smartphones. It is designed to train voice therapy activities at home that have been trained offline. In addition, the records of voice training of patients were managed online so that patients can maintain voice improvement through continuous voice consulting even after the end of voice therapy. User evaluations show that patients are satisfied with the difficulty and content of voice therapy programs provided by home voice trainers, but lack of a portion of user interface, such as the portion of home button and interface between screens. Further study suggests the clinical application of home voice trainer to the patients with voice disorders. It is expected that the development study and the clinical application of smart contents related to voice therapy will be actively conducted.