Analysis of HIV Caregivers in South Africa: A South African Depression and Anxiety Group

ABSTRACT

The severity of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa is well documented. However, little is known regarding the well-being of caregivers of persons with HIV/AIDS in South Africa. This study sought to evaluate characteristics, similarities and differences between groups of HIV caregivers in rural, semi-rural, and urban areas of South Africa. Interesting trends were noticed in the areas of suicidality, alcohol abuse, and intimate trauma. Findings indicate a substantial need for further study in the area of suicidality, denial of or lack of desire to know HIV status and the accompanying diagnostic stigma, and the need for a support network within lay caregivers.     

Using student subjects in experimental research: a challenge to the practice of using students as a proxy for taxpayers

The tax discipline has accepted the practice adopted in the economics and psychology disciplines of using student subjects for experimental research purposes. However, in other social science disciplines (e.g. accounting, management or consumer research), experimental research that uses students as a substitute for another group has been widely criticised as having little external validity. In this research, data are compiled from journal articles over a 20?year period to investigate the extent to which tax experiments use student subjects and the potential implications from this practice. Three research questions are addressed. First, do tax studies using student subjects justify or explain the use of student subjects? Second, are policy recommendations or other extrapolations to the tax-paying population made from the student subject results? Third, is any acknowledgement made of the potential limitations of using student subjects? The findings indicate that approximately half of the tax experiments investigated used student subjects. Of these, approximately 80% provided no justification for their chosen subject sample. A similar proportion did not acknowledge any limitations from the use of a student sample. Around half of the papers using student subjects extrapolated their findings to the general tax-paying population or provided tax policy recommendations. In addition, the research indicates that the tax discipline has not had the same level of robust debate on the use of student subjects in experimental research as that seen in other disciplines. This potentially limits the external validity and utility of many of the tax research experiments undertaken to date.     

Insights and recommendations for recruitment and retention of low socio-economic parents with overweight children

Low socio-economic groups are typically difficult to recruit and retain in health research, which makes it difficult to investigate their health-related beliefs and behaviours. Low socio-economic parents with overweight or obese children took part in a longitudinal qualitative child obesity study over 12?months. These parents’ views of and recommendations for appropriate recruitment and retention strategies are reported. Their interpretations and suggestions are considered in the light of the difficulties that were experienced in designing the study to meet their needs and the approaches that were found to be more effective in achieving and maintaining a viable study cohort. Relevant aspects of recruitment included remuneration, recruitment locations and the use of appropriate weight-related terminology. Retention factors included protocol flexibility, ongoing remuneration and learning opportunities. Barriers to ongoing participation are also discussed. Suggestions are provided for future qualitative research with low socio-economic families.     

A Qualitative Study of Communication among Child Advocacy Multidisciplinary Team Members Using a Web-Based Case Tracking System

A qualitative study was conducted to gain information about communication among child advocacy multidisciplinary team (MDT) members when using a Web-based case tracking system. Analysis of the focus groups revealed a number of strengths and barriers. Users positively appraised aptness of the system for expediting communication and saving time. Lack of training and duplication of effort with other systems were recognized as impediments. In addition to the typical reactions to such systems, other factors, such as motivation and subjectivity, are discussed which may affect the success of such systems.     

Communality Across Time: Responding to Encounters with Maternal Encounters: The Ethics of Interruption

I am grateful to the editors and contributors for this wonderful collection of articles that respond to Maternal Encounters: The Ethics of Interruption (Baraitser, 2009 Baraitser , L. ( 2009 ). Maternal Encounters: The Ethics of Interruption . London , UK : Routledge . [Google Scholar]). Rather than restaging the arguments I made in the book, I attempt here to extend my discussion of the maternal subject as a figure that disrupts or interrupts our notions of subjectivity and ethics. Following Elisabeth Freeman, I propose that the temporality of maternal labor binds a socius that is enunciated not just by an irruption of subjectivity (the “discontinuity in the Real”) but also by an irruption of collectivity in the present tense of neoliberalism. This irruption, in other words, creates a commons, that is, the endurance of communality across time.     

Mum's the Word: Intersubjectivity,Alterity, and the Maternal Subject

Where motherhood and ethics are brought together, it is usually under the rubric of an “ethic of care,” with the mother-child relationship figured as a paradigmatic example of such an ethic. In this article I make use of Levinas' account of ethics as first philosophy to flesh out a notion of “maternal alterity” as an alternative to a maternal ethics based on the various complex mental and emotional tasks that make up care. This represents an attempt to recuperate something for the mother out of her often bewildering encounter with the enigmatic otherness of her child. Situating Levinas alongside a dialogue between Jessica Benjamin and Judith Butler on intersubjectivity, I attempt to disentangle maternal subjectivity from the developing subjectivity of the child and offer an account of the maternal subject as an ethical subject situated, perhaps, “otherwise” to a discourse of care.     

Growing Up in the Old Left: An Intergenerational Tale of Silence and Terror

This essay explores the intergenerational transmission of trauma that arises from political repression. Using mine and my family’s experiences of the witch hunts during the McCarthy era, I explore the psychic effects of the political terror and silencing that accompanied my growing up as a Red Diaper Baby and the profound internal shifts that occur when the social surround becomes a place of danger. I look at my family’s experience in the left during the 1950s and I consider the fear that couldn’t be registered, our unexpressed grief and loss, and the multiple contradictions against which our silence defended. Viewing my personal history through a psychoanalytic lens (e.g., Freud, Gerson, Butler, Puget), and considering a clinical example, I explore the ways the social surround of state-imposed terror during the 1950s was elaborated internally from my earliest years, shaping and shaped by my interpersonal experience and intrapsychic fantasy. I also consider the pre-McCarthy era family history that gave nuance to our experience in the 1950s and the emergence in my clinical work of my history of having been terrorized and silenced by the state. Finally, I briefly reflect on the interweaving of political repression and gendered silence.     

Understanding and Reducing Inconsistency in Seatbelt‐Use Decisions: Findings from a Cardinal Decision Issue Perspective

This article has two aims. The first is to present results that partly explain why some automobile drivers choose to use their seatbelts only part time, thereby exposing themselves to unnecessary risk. The second is to offer and illustrate the “cardinal decision issue perspective”⁽¹⁾ as a tool for guiding research and development efforts that focus on complex real‐life decision behaviors that can entail wide varieties of risk, including but not limited to inconsistent seatbelt use. Each of 24 young male participants drove an instrumented vehicle equipped to record continuously seatbelt use as well as other driving data. After all trips were finished, each participant completed an interview designed to reconstruct how he made randomly selected seatbelt‐use decisions under specified conditions. The interview also examined whether and how drivers established “decision policies” regarding seatbelt use. Such policies were good predictors of inconsistent seatbelt use. Drivers who had previously adopted policies calling for consistent seatbelt use were significantly more likely than others to actually drive belted. Meta‐decisions about seatbelt policy adoption appeared to rest on factors such as whether the driver had ever been asked to consider selecting a policy. Whether a driver made an ad hoc, on‐the‐spot seatbelt‐use decision was associated with a perceived need to make such a decision. Finally, participants with full‐time policies were especially likely to deploy their seatbelts by default, without recognizing the need to decide about belt use on a trip‐by‐trip basis. We end with recommendations for reducing inconsistencies in seatbelt use in actual practice.