Browsing by Author "Townsend, Loraine"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Decisions to care for HIV/AIDS orphans
    (2002) Townsend, Loraine
    There is substantial evidence to indicate that South Africa is facing the prospect of a large number of children, now and in the future, who will be orphaned as a result of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In all likelihood, these children would have experienced psychological trauma through the illness and death of people close to them, and the social isolation that accompanies HIV-infection and AIDS-related illness and death. The ideal would be for as many of these children as possible to experience some type of family life in which to grow and mature into responsible adults. The aim of the present study was to explore a range of factors that might influence prospective carers' decisions to care for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS. These include features of prospective carers; features of the orphaned child; and forms of assistance that may be required. By means of a postal survey, the present study explored existing adoptive and foster parents' (N=17S) willingness to care for an HIV/AIDS orphan. Results show that close to 69% of respondents indicated a willingness to care for an HIV/AIDS orphan. Although some differences were noted depending on the HIV status of the child and whether the respondent was an adoptive or foster parent, on the whole they also indicated a preferred willingness to care for an HIV-negative female child, up to the age of 6 years old, of the same culture and from the same family as themselves, and without surviving relatives or siblings. Free medical care and schooling for the child were the suggested forms of assistance required. The Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1991), explored in the present study, did predict intentions to care for either an HIV-negative or HIV-positive orphan. However, certain components of the models did not have good predictive ability calling into question the usefulness of the model as a means to explain and predict intention to care for an HIV/AIDS orphan. Implications of the study provide recommendations for persons involved with children orphaned by HIV/AIDS.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Restricted
    Following apartheid: Authorship trends in the South African Journal of Psychology after 1994
    (2004) Duncan, Norman; Niekerk, Ashley; Townsend, Loraine
    This article explores the salience of racialised authorship trends in South African psychology post-1994. Specifically, the article investigates whether Black authors currently are better represented in South African psychology than during the pre-1994 period; and whether earlier racialised disparities in authorship in South African psychology are narrowing. The article is based on an analysis of the 36 issues of the South African Journal of Psychology (SAJP), published from 1994 to 2003. The names, institutional affiliation, authorship positions, gender and ‘race’ of authors were identified for all contributions of the identified issues of the journal. Simple frequency counts and cross-tabulations were calculated to produce descriptive information. This article reports that, irrespective of authorship position, approximately 78% of authors who had been published in the SAJP during the period under consideration were White and approximately 22% were Black. Despite representing an ongoing marginal voice in the realm of psychological knowledge production, Black authors' contributions to the SAJP increased nearly three-fold since the early 1990s. Similar increases were identified for sole authorship and first authorship, amongst others. These results are examined within the context of a population of Black psychologists that has been increasing steadily since the 1990s.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Reaching the hard to reach: longitudinal investigation of adolescents' attendance at an after-school sexual and reproductive health programme in Western Cape, South Africa
    (BioMed Central Ltd, 2015) Mathews, Catherine; Eggers, Sander; de Vries, Petrus; Mason-Jones, Amanda; Townsend, Loraine; Aaro, Leif; De Vries, Hein
    BACKGROUND: Adolescents need access to effective sexual and reproductive health (SRH) interventions, but face barriers accessing them through traditional health systems. School-based approaches might provide accessible, complementary strategies. We investigated whether a 21-session after-school SRH education programme and school health service attracted adolescents most at risk for adverse SRH outcomes and explored motivators for and barriers to attendance. METHODS: Grade 8 adolescents (average age 13years) from 20 schools in the intervention arm of an HIV prevention cluster randomised controlled trial in the Western Cape Province of South Africa, were invited to participate in an after-school SRH program and to attend school health services. Using a longitudinal design, we surveyed participants at baseline, measured their attendance at weekly after-school sessions for 6months and surveyed them post-intervention. We examined factors associated with attendance using bivariate and multiple logistic and Poisson regression analyses, and through thematic analysis of qualitative data. RESULTS: The intervention was fully implemented in 18 schools with 1576 trial participants. The mean attendance of the 21-session SRH programme was 8.8 sessions (S.D. 7.5) among girls and 6.9 (S.D. 7.2) among boys. School health services were visited by 17.3% (14.9% of boys and 18.7% of girls). Adolescents who had their sexual debut before baseline had a lower rate of session attendance compared with those who had not (6.3 vs 8.5, p<.001). Those who had been victims of sexual violence or intimate partner violence (IPV), and who had perpetrated IPV also had lower rates of attendance. Participants were motivated by a wish to receive new knowledge, life coaching and positive attitudes towards the intervention. The unavailability of safe transport and domestic responsibilities were the most common barriers to attendance. Only two participants cited negative attitudes about the intervention as the reason they did not attend. CONCLUSIONS: Reducing structural barriers to attendance, after-school interventions are likely to reach adolescents with proven-effective SRH interventions. However, special attention is required to reach vulnerable adolescents, through offering different delivery modalities, improving the school climate, and providing support for adolescents with mental health problems and neurodevelopmental academic problems.TRIAL REGISTRATION:Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN56270821; Registered 13 February 2013.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Risky sexual behaviour among men : HIV surveillance and risk reduction among men who have multiple, female sexual partners in Cape Town, South Africa
    (2010) Townsend, Loraine; Flisher, Alan J; Mathews, Catherine
    Second generation HIV surveillance surveys that collect biological and behavioural data from populations of interest is urgently needed to demonstrate accountability to domestic and international HIV funders, monitor trends in HIV and risk behaviours over time, and provide evidence of the effectiveness of HIV prevention efforts.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Restricted
    The relationship between bullying behaviours and high school dropout in Cape Town, South Africa
    (2008) Townsend, Loraine; Flisher, Alan J; Chikobvu, Perpetual; Lombard, Carl; King, Gary
    Bullying is generally defined as largely unprovoked, negative physical or psychological actions perpetrated repeatedly over time between bully/ies and victims. Bullying can lead to fear of school, absenteeism, and stunted academic progress, which in turn are precursors to dropping out of school. This paper's aim is to report rates of bullying behaviour, and to investigate whether bullying behaviour predicts high school dropout in Cape Town, South Africa. Stratified, proportional sampling yielded 39 from a total of 214 schools, from which 40 learners were randomly selected from the combined class list of two, randomly chosen, Grade 8 classes in each of the 39 participating schools. Thus 1 470 learners (from a total of 181 018) completed a self-report questionnaire in 1997, and were followed-up in 2001. This report focuses on those learners who had dropped out of school between 1997 and 2001 (n = 776; 55.2%). Univariate and multiple logistic regression models were used to investigate the relationship between bullying behaviours and dropout, controlling for factors known to be strongly related to high school dropout, namely age, socioeconomic status, race, or ethnicity, being raised by a single parent, repeating a grade, and substance use. Odds ratios and 95 per cent confidence intervals were calculated, taking the clustering of schools into account. In 1997, 52% of the boys and 37% of the girls had been involved in bullying behaviours. Of the three bullying categories (bully, victim, and bully-victim), girls but not boys in the 'bully-victim' category were significantly more likely to drop out of school (OR 1.82; CI 1.09-3.04, and when controlling for confounders OR 2.60; CI 1.32-5.10). The pervasiveness of both high school dropout and bullying behaviour points to an urgent need for future research, and intervention in these areas.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Using respondent-driven sampling (RDS) to recruit illegal poly-substance users in Cape Town, South Africa: implications and future directions
    (BioMed Central, 2016-09-01) Burnhams, Nadine Harker; Laubscher, Ria; Howell, Simon; Shaw, Mark; Erasmus, Jodilee; Townsend, Loraine
    Background: South Africa continues to witness an increase in illicit poly-substance use, although a precise measurement continues to be compounded by difficulties in accessing users. In a pilot attempt to use respondent-driven sampling (RDS)—a chain referral sampling method used to access populations of individuals who are ‘hard-to-reach’—this article documents the feasibility of the method as recorded in a simultaneously run, multisite, poly-substance study in Cape Town. Here we aim to a) document the piloting of RDS among poly-substance users in the three socio-economic disparate communities targeted; b) briefly document the results; and c) review the utility of RDS as a research tool. Methods: Three cross-sectional surveys using standard RDS procedures were used to recruit active poly-substance users and were concurrently deployed in three sites. Formative research was initially conducted to assess the feasibility of the survey. To determine whether RDS could be used to successfully recruit poly-substance users, social network characteristics, such as network size was determined. Results: A 42.5 % coupon return rate was recorded in total from 12 initial seeds. There were vast differences in the recruitment chains of individual seeds—two generated more than 90 recruits, and 2 of the 10 recruitment chains showing a length of more than 10 waves. Findings include evidence of the use of 3 or more substances in all three sites, high levels of unemployment among users, with more than a third of participants in two sites reporting arrest for drug use in the past 12 months. Conclusions: Our results indicate that RDS was a feasible and acceptable sampling method for recruiting participants who may not otherwise be accessible. Future studies can use RDS to recruit such cohorts, and the method could form part of broader efforts to document vulnerable populations.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Restricted
    Women and authorship in post-apartheid psychology
    (SAGE, 2004) Shefer, Tamara; Shabalala, Nokuthula; Townsend, Loraine
    This article addresses the issue of women's authorship in psychology. It reflects on the contributions of women authors to psychological knowledge production over the last 10 years through a quantitative assessment of authorship in the South African Journal of Psychology (SAJP). Key variables utilised include ‘race’, gender, university (i.e., historically black universities versus historically white universities), sole versus collective authorship, and the order of authors in multiple authored articles. The article highlights the historical silencing of women, particularly black women, in the broader realm of knowledge production, both internationally and in local context. Some of the debates arguing for the value of women's voice in research and publishing are highlighted before the findings of the small descriptive survey are reported. Findings are both predictable and disappointing. While women as a group appear to be publishing relatively well in relation to men as a group, and the overall trend shows a closing of the gap over the last ten years, the intersection of ‘race’ and gender foregrounds the continued marginalisation of black women as authors, as well as the relative stasis of this situation over the last ten years. Furthermore, when taking the numbers of registered psychologists in South Africa into account, women as a group are in the majority, yet are represented in inverse proportion to their numbers in the profession when it comes to publishing. Women also appear to be publishing more in collectives, while men are moving significantly more towards single authorship, reflecting gender stereotypes with respect to co-operative versus individualist modes. Differences between histirically black universities (HBUs) and historically white universities (HWUs) continue, with women publishing less in the former, which is argued to relate to continued areas of inequity and lack of institutional resources and support. The article concludes by emphasising the importance of women's role as producers of knowledge in the profession. It raises a number of material recommendations for ways to support women, especially younger and black authors, in facilitating a more equitable representation of authorship in South African psychology.