Chronic respiratory diseases (CRD) commonly present with abnormal breathing patterns at rest. There is some limited evidence that breathing patterns during speech (speech breathing patterns), differ in CRD compared to healthy individuals. Monitoring speech breathing patterns could provide useful information about changes in respiratory health, however, little is currently known about speech breathing patterns in CRD. This research aimed to explore and evaluate speech protocols, and characterise speech breathing patterns in health and CRD. Information gathered was taken forward to explore the impact (if any) on speech breathing patterns in patients with CRD before and after Pulmonary Rehabilitation (PR). Respiratory Inductive Plethysmography (RIP) was used to quantify breathing/speech breathing patterns during various speech tasks in three studies. In the first study, 29 healthy adults and 11 adults with self-reported asthma were characterised and speech breathing protocols were evaluated. The second study characterised 20 healthy older adults, and 20 patients with CRD (COPD=14, bronchiectasis=6) were assessed before and after a six week PR programme in the third study. Key novel findings were: 1) Breathing patterns were task specific between speech in healthy younger adults, but this finding could not be generalised to healthy older adults or patients with CRD. 2) Speech breathing patterns differed between health and CRD, but were not disease specific. 3) A recording period of two minutes was sufficient to provide stable breathing parameters 4) Conversational speech was most useful for assessing speech breathing patterns. 5) No changes in speech breathing patterns were observed after PR, but no changes in resting breathlessness or oxygen saturation were observed either. Conclusion: This research has permitted the optimisation of speech protocols for future research and produced new evidence from patient groups that contradicts previous assumptions about task specificity. This research has not produced any evidence to support the hypothesis that speech breathing patterns are responsive to an intervention.