The Acoustic Voice Quality Index (AVQI) is an objective method to quantify the severity of overall voice quality in concatenated continuous speech and sustained phonation segments. Recently, AVQI was successfully modified to be more representative and ecologically valid because the internal consistency of AVQI was balanced out through equal proportion of the 2 speech types. The present investigation aims to explore its external validation in a large data set. An expert panel of 12 speech-language therapists rated the voice quality of 1058 concatenated voice samples varying from normophonia to severe dysphonia. The Spearman rank-order correlation coefficients (r) were used to measure concurrent validity. The AVQI’s diagnostic accuracy was evaluated with several estimates of its receiver operating characteristics (ROC). Finally, 8 of the 12 experts were chosen because of reliability criteria. A strong correlation was identified between AVQI and auditoryperceptual rating (r = 0.815, P = .000). It indicated that 66.4% of the auditory-perceptual rating’s variation was explained by AVQI. Additionally, the ROC results showed again the best diagnostic outcome at a threshold of AVQI = 2.43. This study highlights external validation and diagnostic precision of the AVQI version 03.01 as a robust and ecologically valid measurement to objectify voice quality.

Purpose: Over the last 5 decades, many acoustic measures have been created to measure roughness and breathiness. The aim of this study is to present a meta-analysis of correlation coefficients ( r ) between auditory-perceptual judgment of roughness and breathiness and various acoustic measures in both sustained vowels and continuous speech. Method: Scientific literature reporting perceptual–acoustic correlations on roughness and breathiness were sought in 28 databases. Weighted average correlation coefficients ( r _w ) were calculated when multiple r -values were available for a specific acoustic marker. An r _w ≥ .60 was the threshold for an acoustic measure to be considered acceptable. Results: From 103 studies of roughness and 107 studies of breathiness that were investigated, only 33 studies and 34 studies, respectively, met the inclusion criteria of the meta-analysis on sustained vowels. Eighty-six acoustic measures were identified for roughness and 85 acoustic measures for breathiness on sustained vowels, in which 43 and 39 measures, respectively, yielded multiple r -values. Finally, only 14 measures for roughness and 12 measures for breathiness produced r _w ≥ .60. On continuous speech, 4 measures for roughness and 21 measures for breathiness were identified, yielding 3 and 6 measures, respectively, with multiple r -values in which only 1 and 2, respectively, had r _w ≥ .60. Conclusion: This meta-analysis showed that only a few acoustic parameters were determined as the best estimators for roughness and breathiness.