OBJECTIVES: To identify the types of patients who talk with their physicians as a result of Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) advertising. METHODS: Data were taken from a national survey, "Public Health Impact of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Prescription Drugs, July 2001- January 2002", conducted by researchers from Harvard Medical School. Participants (n = 3000) were interviewed by telephone. We constructed a conceptual framework consisting of outcomes (3 types of physician visits), intervention (DTC experience) and five groups of explanatory factors (health beliefs, demographics, health status, socioeconomic status and market factors). Data were analyzed with three multivariate stepwise logistic regressions. The three dependent variables were whether an advertisement for a prescription drug had ever prompted the patient to: 1) visit to discuss prescription drug, 2) visit to discuss new condition, and 3) visit to discuss treatment change. RESULTS: Out of all independent variables, only six variables consistently showed significant effects on the three dependent variables after adjusting for other variables. They were: 1) taking medication on regular basis, 2) having anxiety, 3) having high advertisement attentiveness, 4) viewing media as the most important source prompting one to talk with physician, 5) believing that DTC advertisements increased awareness of new treatment, and 6) believing that DTC advertisements improved discussion with health professionals. The six variables were the strongest predictors for DTC-prompted physician visits.CONCLUSIONS: Our nationally representative study found multiple factors were associated with different types of physician visits prompted by DTC advertisements. This information could be used to target those patients most likely to talk to their physicians as a result of DTC advertisements.

This study represents a shift in focus with regard to studies related to traumatic events such as childhood sexual abuse (CSA). It endeavours to go beyond documenting the prevalence of CSA to understanding the moderating factors that encourage adaptive adjustment to CSA. The rationale of this study was to understand how personal beliefs in a just world, future aspirations and proactive coping in the context of an earlier traumatic event such as CSA, are related. My secondary interest was to understand how the aforementioned constructs feature in the development of resilience. I strove to do this by exploring the relationship between proactive coping, just-world beliefs (with specific reference to personal belief in a just world) and future aspirations of a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I made use of an instrumental case study design. A single participant was purposively selected for this study due to her unique features of being a self-identified resilient survivor of child sexual abuse. Data was collected over a period of three months by means of semi-structured interviews, drawings and theory-based scales. In this study I made use of qualitative data analysis to explore the theoretical relationships amongst the constructs. The results of the study suggest that there is a relationship between personal belief in a just world and religiosity, and that this relationship may mediate the optimistic orientation in the participant of the present study. There also appears to be a relationship between the personal belief in a just world and future aspirations of the participant in this study, suggesting that the role of just world beliefs in terms of the active pursuit and investment in future goals need to be further examined. Finally, the relationship between positive future aspirations and proactive coping was less clear, requiring further investigation to elucidate this relationship. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Educational Psychology / unrestricted

At the commencement of this thesis I saw myself standing at the outer limits of my knowledge with my nose pressed against a wall of demarcation. This wall was built from my willingness to tolerate systems of control in silence and from my unwillingness to make my beliefs and personal convictions known. I set out at the start of this journey with two intentions. I want to raise my voice because I didn’t want to pretend about my faith anymore. And for the first time use my art practice as a mouthpiece to tell these truths.