# A Transparent Decision Support Tool in Screening for Laryngeal Disorders Using Voice and Query Data
## 2 Voice and Query Data
### Query Data  
The questionnaire statements identified by [PERSON] et al. [23] were used in this study. In [23], these statements were deemed as being the most important for solving the voice pathology detection tasks. The \"Query\" database contained 596 subjects (106 healthy males, 221 healthy females, 118 pathological males, and 151 pathological females) ranging from 17 to 86 years in age. All subjects from the \"Voice\" database are present in the \"Query\" database. The questionnaire data were obtained from subjects' responses to the set of questions, presented in Table 1. A set of 26 questions may seem too big for daily clinical work. However, it was shown that this set of 26 questions can be reduced to nine without substantial decrease in pathology detection accuracy: the equal error rate (EER) increased from 6.18 to 7.72% when using nine questions instead of 26 [13].  
As a quantization step in rule extraction through affinity analysis (see Section 3.1), answers to questions with a scale possessing more than seven unique values were transformed into quartiles. Zero values were considered as a separate category and did not undergo the transformation. Answers to questions # 22-25 (\(G_{1}\)-\(G_{4}\)) were replaced with a new response \(G_{0}\), which indicates that the subject responded to at least one of the questions by a _no problem_ answer:  
\[G_{0}=(G_{1}=0\lor G_{2}=0\lor G_{3}=0\lor G_{4}=0). \tag{1}\]  
If there were no answers to questions # 22-25 as \"_no problem_\" (\(G_{1}>0\) and \(G_{2}>0\) and \(G_{3}>0\) and \(G_{4}>0\)), then the value of \(G_{0}\) was set to 0.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c l l} \hline \hline \# & **Question Content** & **Units (or Scale) of Measurement** \\ \hline
1 & Subject’s gender & [Male, Female] \\
2 & Subject’s age & discrete number \\
3 & Average duration of intensive speech use & hours/day \\
4 & Average duration of intensive speech use & days/week \\
5 & Smoking & [Yes, No] \\
6 & Smoking intensity & cigarettes/day \\
7 & Smoking history & years \\
8 & Maximum phonation time & seconds \\
9 & SSA of voice function quality & visual analogue scale from 0 to 100 \\
10 & SSA of voice hoareness & from 0 (_no_) to 100 (_severe hoarseness_) \\
11 & Voice handicap progressing & grade from 1 to 4 \\
12 & SSA of daily experienced stress level & from 0 (_no_) to 100 (_very much stress_) \\
13 & Frequency of singing & grade from 1 to 5 \\
14 & Frequency of talking/singing in a smoke-filled room & grade from 1 to 5 \\
15 & SSA of experienced discomfort due to voice disorder & from 0 (_no_) to 100 (_huge discomfort_) \\
16 & SSA of “too weak voice” & from 0 (_no_) to 100 (_very clear_) \\
17 & SSA of repetitive “loss of voice” & from 0 (_no_) to 100 (_very clean_) \\
18 & SSA of reduced voice & from 0 (_no_) to 100 (_very distinctly_) \\
19 & SSA of reduced ability to sing & from 0 (_no_) to 100 (_very distinctly_) \\
20 & Frequency of voice cracks or aberrant voice & from 0 (_no_) to 100 (_very often_) \\
21 & Level of vocal usage & level from 1 to 4 \\
22 & Speaking took extra effort (\(G_{1}\)) & from 0 (_no_) to 5 (_severe problem_) \\
23 & Throat discomfort or pain after voice usage (\(G_{2}\)) & from 0 (_no_) to 5 (_severe problem_) \\
24 & Voice weakens while talking, vocal fatigue (\(G_{3}\)) & from 0 (_no_) to 5 (_severe problem_) \\
25 & Voice cracks or sounds different (\(G_{4}\)) & from 0 (_no_) to 5 (_severe problem_) \\
26 & GFI [24] = \(G_{1}+G_{2}+G_{3}+G_{4}\) & grade from 0 to 20 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 1: Query items.