South African adolescents are at high risk of becoming victims of sexual abuse. However, research and experience by practising social workers show that adolescents are reluctant to report sexual abuse immediately. This could be due to the lack recognised guidelines available by which to report abuse and receive the necessary help. The purpose of the research was to investigate the reasons why adolescents fail to report sexual abuse in order to establish relevant guidelines. This would also determine the role of the forensic social worker in the report of sexual abuse by adolescent victims. The research followed a combined quantitative and qualitative approach. 220 adolescents from two high schools and six Welkom social workers were involved in the investigation. Both groups of participants completed questionnaires while the social workers were also involved in a focus group. Forensic social workers work is a new field of specialisation in the social work profession. There is a serious misconception about the role of the forensic social worker not only among other practising social workers, but also among the general public and adolescents in specific. The forensic social worker can play an important role in establishing guidelines for the report of sexual abuse by adolescent victims. The findings clearly showed that adolescents do not report sexual abuse within the family. The abused adolescent becomes a victim as South Africa does not yet have definite guidelines available for the report of sexual abuse. The study found that the forensic social worker has a definite role to play in the report of sexual abuse by adolescents. / Thesis (M.A. (MW Forensic))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

South African adolescents are at high risk of becoming victims of sexual abuse. However, research and experience by practising social workers show that adolescents are reluctant to report sexual abuse immediately. This could be due to the lack recognised guidelines available by which to report abuse and receive the necessary help. The purpose of the research was to investigate the reasons why adolescents fail to report sexual abuse in order to establish relevant guidelines. This would also determine the role of the forensic social worker in the report of sexual abuse by adolescent victims. The research followed a combined quantitative and qualitative approach. 220 adolescents from two high schools and six Welkom social workers were involved in the investigation. Both groups of participants completed questionnaires while the social workers were also involved in a focus group. Forensic social workers work is a new field of specialisation in the social work profession. There is a serious misconception about the role of the forensic social worker not only among other practising social workers, but also among the general public and adolescents in specific. The forensic social worker can play an important role in establishing guidelines for the report of sexual abuse by adolescent victims. The findings clearly showed that adolescents do not report sexual abuse within the family. The abused adolescent becomes a victim as South Africa does not yet have definite guidelines available for the report of sexual abuse. The study found that the forensic social worker has a definite role to play in the report of sexual abuse by adolescents. / Thesis (M.A. (MW Forensic))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

Research suggests that reporting suicide has the potential to influence vulnerable individuals to emulate suicide behaviour. Media guidelines for the responsible reporting of suicide have been developed and disseminated worldwide, but with mixed success. One factor that may influence guideline uptake is the degree to which health professionals have collaborated with the media professionals in guideline development, dissemination and implementation. The study used semi-structured interviews with media professionals to understand attitudes towards the guidelines, to explore the ways in the media were engaged in communication regarding the guidelines, and to identify whether this engagement bears upon media attitudes toward the guidelines. Findings indicate that media professionals view the guidelines as useful information within the bounds of normal reporting, but find them difficult to implement. Excellence theory indicates that the predominantly one-way and asymmetrical strategies used to engage the media in communication around the guidelines may play a role in these attitudes. The study echoes literature suggesting that collaborative guideline development and implementation is essential to meaningfully change suicide reporting practices.

Background: HIV drug resistance limits the effectiveness of antiretroviral therapy. Adequate surveillance of HIV drug resistance prevalence is challenged by heterogenous and inadequate data reporting. In this study, we sought to identify a list of reporting items for studies of HIV drug resistance prevalence and an understanding of why these items are important to report. Methods: We used a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design involving authors and users of studies of HIV drug resistance prevalence. In the quantitative phase we conducted a cross-sectional electronic survey (n=51). Survey participants rated various reporting items on whether they are essential to report, producing validity ratios which were used to produce a draft reporting item checklist. In the qualitative phase, two focus group discussions (n=9 in total) discussed this draft item checklist and which of the items should be reported and why. We also conducted a thematic analysis of the group discussions to identify emergent themes regarding items to be considered for the reporting guideline. Results: We identified 38 potential reporting items including participant characteristics, sampling methods, and resistance testing methods. The strongest themes that emerged from the discussions were agreement over the importance of reporting certain items, concerns over the availability and ethics of reporting certain participant data, the importance of interpretability and comparability, and the necessity for reporting guidelines to appreciate context-specific prevalence research. Conclusions: We have identified a list of reporting items for studies of the prevalence of HIV drug resistance along with an explanation of why researchers believe these items are important. The next steps involve further elaborating upon these findings in the reporting guidelines. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / Drug resistant HIV is very challenging to treat and is an important global health problem. It is difficult to know how common HIV drug resistance is around the world because the studies on HIV drug resistance are not reported similarly. This is because there are no standard guidelines for these studies. In this study, we asked HIV drug resistance researchers to complete a survey on what they thought should be reported is studies measuring HIV drug resistance. Then, we had group conversations where we asked them to explain why they believed the items were important. We identified 38 potential reporting items, most of which would require authors of HIV drug resistance studies to clarify the settings, participants and methods used in their research. These items will make up a reporting checklist for authors of HIV drug resistance studies and make research in this area more comparable

Systematic review is a type of review that identifies, assesses, and combines all the published empirical evidence on a specific topic by using explicit, systematic methods. This type of reviews often includes a meta-analysis, a statistical tool used to combine the collected data into a quantitative summary estimate. Guidance documents such as the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) were developed to improve the reporting of systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials. Systematic reviews are commonly used in the field of healthcare research and are increasingly being employed in the field of environmental epidemiology. Environmental epidemiology studies examine exposures in populations and their associations with health outcomes. This field contains several unique considerations that require a careful and critical assessment to ensure the validity of results and to make the data or information more useful for the readers. However, to our knowledge, there is currently no guidance document for conducting systematic reviews that comprehensively addresses the specific issues in this field. Therefore, the objectives of this proposal are twofold: (1) to conduct a systematic review of the currently published epidemiology systematic reviews on a specific topic (mercury exposure and children autism spectrum disorder) to identify analytical issues encountered, and (2) use the experience and other potential solution identified in the literature to develop a guidance or recommendation document for conducting systematic reviews of environmental epidemiology studies. Akin to reporting guidelines for randomized controlled trials, a reporting guideline for environmental epidemiology is anticipated to increase the clarity and transparency of publications and enhance the usefulness of systematic reviews for knowledge synthesis.

Methodological studies of health research are undertaken to investigate the practice of research. They have been instrumental in inciting developments in the design, conduct, analysis, and reporting of health research. Due in part to the field’s diversity, these studies can be difficult to identify in databases. As these studies have not been comprehensively examined to date, the overarching goal of this thesis was to characterize methodological studies and to investigate how they have been labelled and reported in the literature. First, we demonstrate how methodological studies are conducted to provide guidance to end-users—in this case physiatrists and rehabilitation researchers—in a methods guidance paper on pilot and feasibility studies (PAFS), a type of health research design. Second, we performed a pilot study testing the feasibility of searching for and identifying methodological studies in literature databases. Third, based on the pilot study findings and previous research, we outline a protocol for the development of a reporting guideline for methodological studies of health research. Lastly, as part of the first phase of the reporting guideline development process, we performed a review of methodological studies focusing on those that specifically investigated PAFS. In a case study of rehabilitation research, a third of studies labelled as PAFS did not outline any feasibility outcomes, and few provided progression plans to definitive studies. Guidance was focused on providing recommendations and resources for assessing feasibility to help reduce the prevalence of small studies disguised as PAFS, which wastes research resources. In the pilot of methodological studies, preliminary findings on nomenclature and reporting reinforced the notion that there are many names used to describe studies with similar intentions. It was also determined feasible to build a search strategy to identify methodological studies in literature databases. Subsequent findings from the review of methodological studies illustrated that reporting practices are the most common aspect of research investigated. Study design names such as ‘methodological review’, ‘systematic review’, and ‘systematic survey’ were often used to describe studies with similar motives, i.e., to synthesize data from previously published research, whether the synthesis approach was quantitative or qualitative. Existing reporting checklists were rarely used, and when used not appended, possibly due to irrelevance of fields oriented to studies with persons. This work demonstrates the necessity and importance of consensus on reporting and nomenclature for making methodological studies more accessible to the health research community. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Following the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, it was hypothesized that offenders used knowledge gained from news media reports about previous events to plan mass shootings. Although researchers have studied active shooter events, little research has been conducted on the factors that influence an active shooter's decision and ability to carry out such events. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between the rate of news media reporting about an active shooter event and the casualty rate of the ensuing event in the United States. The bracketed time of this assessment was between April 20, 1999, and June 15, 2016. The age and regional location of the subsequent shooters were examined as moderating variables. Social learning and social cognitive theories constituted the theoretical framework. Data were gathered from existing mass shooting and active shooter studies, Google News, and the ProQuest Central database. A Spearman's correlation analysis revealed no significant relationship between the rate of news media reporting about an active shooter event and the casualty rate of the ensuing event. The age and regional location of subsequent shooters were not moderating variables. However, a Spearman's correlation analyses did reveal a significant relationship between the casualty rate of an active shooter event and the amount of news media coverage the event received prior to the ensuing event. The study finding clarified the need for active shooter reporting guidelines, similar to existing suicide reporting guidelines. The implementation of such guidelines could reduce the regularity and severity of active shooter events, thereby improving public safety in the United States by reducing the regularity and severity of active shooter events.