Parker (1996 ) suggests that all mothers experience maternal ambivalence , that is the feelings of love and hate directed simultaneously at one's own child . Furthermore Parker (1996 ) contends that this is a normal, healthy part of the development of the mother-child relationship . However due to social expectations around mothering the experience o f ambivalent feelings towards one's own child is considered abnormal and even pathological. As such any normal experiences of maternal ambivalence are experienced as deeply conflictual and distressing by the mothers. Price (1988 ) and Parker (1996 ) suggest that as a result of these deeply distressing experiences , mothers feel intense guilt and desperation which , if these become unmanageable , can lead to deep feelings of depression in the mother and even possibly child abuse. This study made use of directed focus groups and sought to explore the difficulties and tensions created by maternal ambivalence and to unpack the way in which mothers understood these experiences . The voice relational method of analysis was used to deepen the understanding of the participants stories. It became clear that maternal ambivalence was evident across these participant's narratives and was mediated by social expectations , as Parker (1996 ) proposed . The majority of these participants found these experiences incredibly distressing and deeply conflictual . They expressed the feeling of being alone in these experiences and interpreted these experiences as abnormal and sometimes even pathological . However , through the process of the focus groups the process of maternal ambivalence began to be normalised and reconstructed in a more enabling and supportive way. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2006.

Introduction: Malaria is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in developing countries, with sub-Saharan Africa carrying the highest per capita burden of this disease in the world. In line with the World Health Organisation's Global Strategy for Malaria Control, which emphasises the empowerment of local communities in health decision making and positive health seeking behaviour, the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health developed two malaria health education materials. These health education materials have since never been systematically evaluated in terms of their content, the target groups reached, and the appropriateness of the health education messages provided. The aim of this project was thus to evaluate these existing malaria health education printed materials, including their efficacy in communicating appropriate, understandable and relevant messages at community level in the malarias region of Jozini in northern KwaZulu-Natal. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2007.

Violence against women is not only recognized as a pervasive and insidious social problem affecting all societies, but is being increasingly characterized as the most widespread form of human rights violation. South Africa is at this moment, experiencing violent crime at an unprecedented rate. Today, violence has become deeply entrenched in South African society. As such it is not surprising to witness the widespread abuse against women. The researcher begins by examining relevant literature in the area of the experiences of women in intimate abusive relationships. This study makes use of a phenomenological method to explicate the meanings of 6 participants of the Aryan Benevolent Home, a safe house, who have experienced abuse in an intimate relationship. The central aim of the study was to investigate the experiences of abuse women by their intimate male partners. The research was approached from a feminist perspective, using a qualitative methodology. The participants were diverse in terms of age and background and drawn from women seeking help at the Aryan Benevolent Home. Information was obtained by means of a semi-structured interview, which was tape recorded and transcribed for analysis. Anonymity and confidentiality were assured to all participants before the study. The study concludes with the limitations and implications of the findings and recommendations are further discussed. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.

Aim: The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the experiences of hospital workplace violence on nursing personnel currently employed in a specific context (an operating theatre) in a private hospital in the Durban Metropolitan Area (DMA). Methodology: The broad paradigm of this research study is located in the qualitative research field. The researcher specifically used an interpretative phenomenological approach (IPA) following the guidelines of Smith, Jarman and Osborne (1999). IPA was used because the researcher was interested in identifying, describing and understanding the subjective experience of individual nurses in respect of their cognitive interpretations and subjective experiences of nursing workplace violence; and because the researcher intended to make sense of the participants' world through a process of interpretative activity. A focus group and two thematically semi-structured interviews were conducted with each subsequent participant by the researcher. A total of eight participants took part in the study, five were interviewed separately and eleven interviews were done. The IPA as suggested by Smith et al. (1999) was used to identify the connections and themes in respect of shared meanings and references and /or in respect of hierarchical relationships in each transcript. Themes that were found to be common were grouped together i.e. clustered by the researcher. The researcher then derived a master list of superordinate themes and sub-themes from the clusters of themes. Findings: The participants' lived experiences of workplace violence in the operating theatre indicated that workplace violence had impacted and was impacting on their everyday work experience. A range of workplace violence experiences as precipitated and perpetuated by doctors, fellow nurses and hospital management was noted. These included verbal abuse, bullying, intimidation, process violence, physical assault and sexual harassment. Differences between the types of workplace violence perpetrated by doctors, nurses and hospital management were found. The participants articulated a range of subjective meanings and explanations for their colleagues' behaviours (intrapersonal, interpersonal and institutional) - all of which were found to have impacted on their psychological wellbeing. A variety of defense mechanisms and coping strategies were identified and discussed. Conclusion: Following McKoy and Smith (2001), the researcher identified a number of factors that made the nursing workplace and/or the healthcare environment more susceptible to the occurrence of workplace violence, e.g. low staffing, a reduction in trained staff, and the profit-motives of private hospitals in the healthcare industry (managed healthcare). These were found to have impacted on each of the participants in this study in respect of their experiences of workplace violence. In sum, the study has provided a clear, department specific picture about the experiences of theatre nurses in respect of workplace violence. A number of interventions to facilitate and retain the services of theatre nurses in the operating theatre have been suggested. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.

The study is concerned with the ways early adolescent males understand and experience bullying within a hetero-normative school context. The research focuses on the ways in which bullying occurs, and how it relates to identity development amongst young boys. Key theoretical constructs include multiple masculinities, social dominance theory, and social constructionism. The researcher adopted an ethnographic approach. Constructs were explored through the use of four focus groups and one individual interview with 20 Grade 8 learners at a co-educational high school. Three dominant themes emerged from the discussions. The Embodied Self explores the expression and development of gender identity through the construction of the physical and performative male body. Displaced Masculinities explores the gradual shift in power that young men have experienced in terms of current representations of gender, race and technology. The third theme, Recovering Power, identifies subtle subversion strategies that young males reproduce to recover social power. Bullying is normalised within the school context and is understood as a physical and psychological process that differentiates desirable and undesirable masculinities. Masculinities are actively policed by peers, forcing boys to position themselves against the ideal hegemonic masculinity underpinning feelings of uncertainty and instability. Recommendations include continued opportunities for discussion of gender issues at a formative school level, focused policy development addressing the abuse of communication technologies, and translation of gender research into policy and legislation to recognise the role and responsibilities of men, with the major aim of reducing inequality. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

When a fault develops in a chemical plant process, the plant operator must identify the fault rapidly and take immediate corrective action. The interaction of process factors varies from fairly to highly complex (in extreme cases, this interaction is not yet fully understood even by chemical engineers) and consequences of faults can occur in chainreactions. The operators task is to control all process parameters until the plant is brought back to normal conditions. Doing this, he is fully aware of the fact, that the consequences of wrong corrective action or failure to bring the plant under control can be grave in economic terms, extremely serious (lethal) in terms of the operator's hazards and potentially catastrophic. Thus a considerable amount of stress can be built up, which is potentially interfering with the "cool" required to succeed in overcoming the emergency as quickly and efficiently as possible. This project attempts to explore presumed correlations between personality factors and performance under stress. Where such correlations exist in significant manifestation, their rank of magnitude was established and their predictive value investigated. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, 1977.

This study focused on the kinds of photographs taken by twelve South African children at three different age levels (namely seven, eleven and fifteen). The children were given cameras which they used over a weekend to photograph any content of their choice. The children were then interviewed, both individually as well as in groups to discuss their photographs and experiences. The photographs were used as a trigger to explore children's development, sense of self and social worlds. Traditional developmental theory was useful in accounting for some of the differences in photographic ability of the different age groups but further thick description was possible using sociocultural theories of cognition, theories of the self, identity and representation. The researcher concluded that the children's understanding ofthemselves, the people and world around them as well as photography, is constructed by important social, cultural and historical forces which surround the children. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2007.

The transition from the apartheid rule to a new democracy in South Africa has been accompanied by a vision of a national health care system that is based on the principles of universal primary health care. This vision opens up access to provision of mental health to everyone. This means that nurses, as gate-keepers of primary health care, have had to be trained in identification and management of minor mental health problems that are presented in their community clinics as well as health centres. For the current study, the need for such training was identified by an intern psychologist placed in one of the clinics in the area of KwaDedangendlale Valley of a Thousand Hills. His work in the area alerted him to the shortcomings of the nurses in both identification and management of what was perceived to be mental health problems. These shortcomings included the nurses' inability to identity and hence properly refer patients who needed the intervention of a professional mental health specialist. From this, a training programme which also included a reorientation process to deal with negative attitudes that are usually levied against the mentally ill was undertaken. Reorientation in this context was based on the assumption that prior to training nurses had a particular world view or position towards the provision of health care, which was identified to be biomedical and this training sought to re-orientate them towards the provision of a more holistic care which is inclusive of psycho social aspect of functioning The follow up to that training and reorientation programme was an evaluation component. This sought to ascertain whether after training, nurses were better equipped to identify and manage mental health problems. Further to that, the researcher sought to identify whether their attitudes had improved, such that they would be willing to deal with patients who presented with minor psychiatric problems. The objective of the current study is to present results of the evaluation component that was undertaken after training. This evaluation took into consideration both the process undertaken during training and the outcome of the reorientation process itself. Process evaluation focused on what makes a programme successful or unsuccessful. This included how the training was undertaken, i.e. manner of instruction etc. Outcome evaluation focused on establishing how good the programme was and whether it managed to provide desired outcomes i.e. change in nurses' attitudes. The Physician's Belief Scale (Ashworth, Williamson & Montano, 1984) was used for both the pre and post evaluation of the nurses' attitudes. The results revealed that before training, nurses had limited knowledge of mental health problems and as a consequence of this limited knowledge they developed negative attitudes towards provision of mental health care. One of the unexpected results of the study was the response of one of the groups of the nurses trained to the integrative manner of instruction. Their response highlighted the importance of understanding the influence of the padagogy on knowledge transmission and acquisition. Nurses reported to be accustomed to harsh pedagogical methods, used during formal nursing training. This kind of pedagogy was viewed as disempowering, as well as somewhat disrespectful, and hence, the much as the friendly and warm atmosphere presented by the facilitators in the current study was viewed as a welcomed change and an empowering process. Most importantly, one was also alerted to the importance of providing ongoing support to health care professionals after being trained. As Petersen (2000) has cautioned that should there be no additional mentoring or support, nurses would be likely to revert to their usuaVold styles of dealing with their patients' problems, given that the training does not necessarily change their environments. They would still be pressured to see large numbers of patients within a limited time period. And because of this, it becomes easier to just prescribing medication than to explore issues that are psychological in nature. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

Whilst much has been written about the determinants of suicidal behaviour within a South African context, few studies have investigated suicidal behaviour from a developmental context. This study explored the relationship between suicidal tendencies, coping styles, and Intimacy vs. Isolation. There were 175 participants between the ages of 18 to 24 years. Scales measuring coping, suicidal attitudes, and intimacy resolution were administered. The data was analysed quantitatively. Most significant in the findings is the relationship that exists between intimacy resolution, suicidal attitudes and active coping styles. These and other findings provide an initial but empirically important platform for future research endeavours that aim to understand the incidence of suicide amongst one of the most at-risk groups in South Africa today. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2010.

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a computer-based psychological test that measures implicit attitudes, stereotypes and beliefs. In an effort to better understand the applicability and limitations of the IAT researchers have investigated the effects of manipulating a variety of procedural variables that comprise the IAT, not least the IAT categories and the exemplars that are instances of those categories. This study investigated the effects of manipulating the IAT's target categories that define the attitudinal domain that the IAT measures. Experiments were devised to determine the IAT's sensitivity to minor and major semantic manipulations to its target categories while keeping exemplars and attribute categories constant. It was found that the IAT was sensitive to major semantic differences in its target categories, but was apparently insensitive to minor semantic category differences, implying that it is unable to discriminate between subtle distinctions in attitude. It was hypothesised that this latter finding could have been partly due to a temporary cognitive re-definition of the categories in accordance with the salient characteristics of the exemplars. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2008.