Browsing by Author "Rabie, Stephan"

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    Balancing roles and blurring boundaries : community health workers’ experiences of navigating the crossroads between personal and professional life in rural South Africa
    (Wiley, 2020-09) Laurenzi, Christina A.; Skeen, Sarah; Rabie, Stephan; Coetzee, Bronwyne J.; Notholi, Vuyolwethu; Bishop, Julia; Chademana, Emma; Tomlinson, Mark
    As demand for health services grows, task-shifting to lay health workers has become an attractive solution to address shortages in human resources. Community health workers (CHWs), particularly in low-resource settings, play critical roles in promoting equitable healthcare among underserved populations. However, CHWs often shoulder additional burdens as members of the same communities in which they work. We examined the experiences of a group of CHWs called Mentor Mothers (MMs) working in a maternal and child health programme, navigating the crossroads between personal and professional life in the rural Eastern Cape, South Africa. Semi-structured qualitative interviews (n = 10) were conducted by an experienced isiXhosa research assistant, asking MMs questions about their experiences working in their own communities, and documenting benefits and challenges. Interviews were transcribed and translated into English and thematically coded. Emergent themes include balancing roles (positive, affirming aspects of the role) and blurring boundaries (challenges navigating between professional and personal obligations). While many MMs described empowering clients to seek care and drawing strength from being seen as a respected health worker, others spoke about difficulties in adequately addressing clients’ needs, and additional burdens they adopted in their personal lives related to the role. We discuss the implications of these findings, on an immediate level (equipping CHWs with self-care and boundary-setting skills), and an intermediate level (introducing opportunities for structured debriefings and emphasising supportive supervision). We also argue that, at a conceptual level, CHW programmes should provide avenues for professionalisation and invest more up-front in their workforce selection, training and support.
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    Community context and individual factors associated with arrests among young men in a South African township
    (Public Library of Science, 2019) Christodoulou, Joan; Stokes, Lynissa R.; Bantjes, Jason; Tomlinson, Mark; Stewart, Jackie; Rabie, Stephan; Gordon, Sarah; Mayekiso, Andile; Rotheram-Borus, Mary Jane
    Background: In high-income countries, individual- and community-level factors are associated with increased contact with the criminal justice system. However, little is known about how these factors contribute to the risk of arrest in South Africa, which has one of the highest rates of arrests globally. We examine both individual- and community-level factors associated with arrests among young men living in the townships of Cape Town. Methods: Data were collected from a stratified community sample of 906 young men aged 18–29 years old living in 18 township neighborhoods. Communities with high and low rates of arrest were identified. Logistic regression models were used to assess which individual-level (such as substance use and mental health status) and community-level (such as infrastructure and presence of bars and gangs) factors predict arrests. Results: Significant predictors of arrests were substance use, gang activity, being older, more stressed, and less educated. Living in communities with better infrastructure and in more recently established communities populated by recent immigrants was associated with having a history of arrests. Conclusions: When considering both individual- and community-level factors, substance use and gang violence are the strongest predictors of arrests among young men in South Africa. Unexpectedly, communities with better infrastructure have higher arrest rates. Community programs are needed to combat substance use and gang activity as a pathway out of risk among South African young men.
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    A translation and psychometric investigation of the South African career interest inventory across gender and race among secondary school learners
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-12) Rabie, Stephan; Naidoo, Anthony V.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Psychology.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY: A major component of the practice of career counselling and assessment is the measurement of vocational interests. Both globally and in South Africa, John Holland’s (1997) theory of vocational personalities is one of the most influential career theories, providing a theoretical framework from which practitioners develop and administer vocational interest inventories. However, technological advances in the course of the 21st century have resulted in a rapid transformation in the world of work, rendering popular career interest inventories based on Holland’s model obsolete, both in terms of content and occupational environments. To address these limitations, Morgan, de Bruin, and de Bruin (2014) employed Holland’s typology and constructed an interest inventory, namely the South African Career Interest Inventory (SACII), for a South African university student and young adult sample that yielded reliable and valid scores. Building on this foundation, the aim of this quantitative study was to further explore the validity of the SACII by investigating gender, racial, and language differences in the psychometric properties and interest structures of female and male, Black, Coloured and White South African Grade 9 learners (n = 628), as measured by the SACII. To achieve this aim, the present study also involved translating the SACII into isiXhosa, hereby constructing the first career interest inventory in an indigenous South African language. The study also provided a back-translation of the Afrikaans version of the SACII. Using convenience sampling, all Grade 9 learners from five secondary schools in the Cape Winelands District of South Africa were included as participants for the research sample. Accordingly, the research aimed to investigate whether the SACII can be applied validly, reliably, and indiscriminately on a sample of middle adolescents across different gender, race, and language groups. The results for the present study provided support for the reliability and validity of the scores on the SACII across different racial and language groups in South Africa, but failed to find support for the equal applicability of the scale across gender. Gender, race and language comparisons demonstrated the best model fit for the respective female, Black and isiXhosa participants. It is recommended that future studies further explore the gender difference on the SACII with sample groups diverse in race, culture, age and language. Moreover, future studies should conduct measurement invariance tests to determine the validity of the different language versions of the SACII. In summary, it appears that practitioners may continue to use Holland’s (1997) model in career assessment and counselling in the South African context when a valid career interest inventory, such as the SACII, is employed.
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    Validating the adaptation of the first career measure in isiXhosa : the South African Career Interest Inventory–isiXhosa version
    (SAGE Publications, 2019) Rabie, Stephan; Naidoo, Anthony V.
    South African career counselling practices have predominantly been informed by vocational theories and models developed in the United States and Europe. In view of South Africa’s peculiar history and its unique cultural and linguistic environment, the indiscriminate application of Western career models has become increasingly contentious, as the majority of these models fail to account for culture-specific values that influence an individual’s career interests, decision-making, and development. The South African Career Interest Inventory was developed to address this contention, through operationalising John Holland’s vocational personality theory in South Africa. This study adapted and translated the South African Career Interest Inventory into isiXhosa, in the process constructing the first career interest inventory in a South African indigenous language. Subsequently, we investigated the structural validity of the South African Career Interest Inventory, and therefore Holland’s model, on a sample of isiXhosa-speaking secondary school learners (n = 266). The randomisation test of hypothesised order relations, multidimensional scaling, and covariance structure modelling were employed to examine the structural validity of the inventory. The results demonstrated the South African Career Interest Inventory–isiXhosa version to be a reliable and valid measure of vocational interest on an early isiXhosa adolescent sample, suggesting the tenability of Holland’s model in the South African context. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
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    Who can we reach and who can we keep? predictors of intervention engagement and adherence in a cluster randomized controlled trial in South Africa
    (BMC (part of Springer Nature), 2020-02-27) Rabie, Stephan; Bantjes, Jason; Gordon, Sarah; Almirol, Ellen; Stewart, Jackie; Tomlinson, Mark; Rotheram-Borus, Mary J.
    Background: Engaging and retaining young men in community-based interventions is highly challenging. The purpose of this study was to investigate the individual factors that predict intervention engagement and adherence in a sample of at-risk South African men. Methods: Baseline data were collected as a part of a cluster randomised control trial (RCT) situated in Khayelitsha and Mfuleni, two peri-urban settlements situated on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa. Neighbourhoods were randomised to one of three intervention conditions. We performed univariate descriptive statistics to report neighbourhood and individual socio-demographic factors, and ran multivariate models, adjusting for entry of study, to determine if high adherence and consistency of engagement with the intervention were associated with sociobehavioural demographics and risk behaviours, such as hazardous substance use, gangsterism, and criminal activity. Results: Total of 729 men were on average 22.5 years old (SD 2.8), with a mean of 10 years of education. More than half of the sample were single (94%), lived with their parents (66%) and had an income below ~$30 (52%). The overall mean of adherence is 0.41 (SD 0.24) and mean of consistency of engagement is 0.61 (SD 0.30). Our data indicated that completing more years of education, living with parents, and having higher socioeconomic status were significantly associated with higher rates of engagement and adherence. Men with a history of gang membership demonstrated higher levels of adherence and consistent engagement with the intervention, compared with other men who were recruited to the intervention. Crucially, our data show that young men with a history of substance use, and young men who report symptoms of depression and high levels of perceived stress are equally likely as other young men to adhere to the intervention and attend intervention sessions consistently. Conclusion: Our results may contribute to a better understanding of young men’s patterns of engagement and adherence to public health interventions. The results may have important implications for policy and practice, as they may be useful in planning more effective interventions and could potentially be used to predict which young men can be reached through community-based interventions.