Investigates the determinants of delay behavior in health care seeking in a sample of 292 adolescent patients with STD symptoms. Early health care seeking was determined by perceived seriousness of STDs, an absence of self treatment prior to seeking care, and positive attitudes regarding personal autonomy in condom use behavior. (Contains 17…

In the South African context, "impact" is one of those words that has gathered a set of layered meanings in the field of research and evaluation. It is generally used to mean the "effect" an activity or experience has had on its target audience. Has the experience changed things in any way? Has it made a difference? This paper…

This paper aims to develop a theoretical and practical framework for lifelong learning which will contribute to bridging the development divide, thus facilitating the implementation of the MDGs on both a global and personal level. We see this happening through the direct personal and professional involvement of development professionals (that is,…

This paper follows up an unexpected finding from a community survey that identified drinking and smoking as the most important tuberculosis (TB) risk factor, far ahead of ones commonly associated with TB such as poverty, overcrowded living conditions, and HIV-positive status. It reports perceptions of drinking and smoking from a three-phased study…

South Africa celebrated ten years of democracy in 2004. This special issue of "Social Indicators Research" ("SIR") reviews developments that have impacted on the quality of life of ordinary South Africans during the transition period. The issue updates an earlier volume of "SIR" (Volume 41) published in 1997 and as a…

The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) felt it was timely to create an academic forum in which university researchers have the opportunity to engage with their peers and relevant stakeholders and document the impacts of their North-South research collaboration in a peer-reviewed publication. The Association achieved this by…

In South Africa where there is a very high HIV infection rate among teenagers and young adults, it is surprising to find that students and teachers are very unwilling to talk about the possibility of being or becoming HIV positive. While AIDS messages dominate public discourse, there is a silence in schools about the personal in relation to AIDS.…

This article examines how young adults perceive the messages about HIV-AIDS, sex and risk that they receive from adults, and how this impacts on their sexual practices. It does this by firstly using a feminist methodological approach focusing exclusively on the voices of the learners, and secondly by drawing on Foucault's analysis of power…

The global spread of the HIV and AIDS pandemics will, for the next three generations at least, underline education access, quality and provision. Reforms within the sector will necessarily take account of the implications of this plague within national, provincial and local contexts. This article is based on several assumptions. The first is that…

The high prevalence of HIV among young people in African countries underscores a pressing need for effective prevention interventions. Adapting school-based prevention programs developed in the United States for use in African schools may present an alternative to the time-consuming process of developing home-grown programs. The researchers report…

Although prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) programs are predicated on maternal behavior change, little is known about sociocultural factors affecting maternal-child care practices in this arena. The authors used narrative methods (key informant workshops, questionnaires, focus groups, and case study analysis) to explore how…

This article reports on the effectiveness of the first systematically developed health education intervention for the reduction of risky sexual behavior among soon-to-be-released prisoners in South Africa. Data from three out of four prisons are eligible for data analysis including 263 inmates. Using a nested experimental design, short-term…

This study examines whether parental investment and membership in social clubs are associated with safer sexual behaviors among South African youth. Participants comprised 4,800 randomly selected adolescents age 14 to 22 living in the Cape Town area in 2002. Logistic regression was used to examine associations between measures of parental…

The evaluation of the Department of Educations' life skills program on HIV and AIDS prevention among Grade 9 students in 22 randomly allocated schools in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, showed only a significant increase in student knowledge about HIV/AIDS in the intervention group compared with the control group. No effects were found on safe sex…

This study compared the predictive value of the theory of planned behavior in university students in South Africa (N = 251) and the United States (N = 160) who completed an anonymous self-administered questionnaire. Multiple regression analyses revealed that condom use and intention were significantly predicted by positive condom attitude,…