Empowering the South African community's AIDS intervention workforce: an informetric study of HIV/AIDS research projects, with special reference to masters and doctoral dissertations and theses

Abstract

The prevalence rate of HIV in South Africa has maintained an alarmingly high level and has become a great concern for all stakeholders. The situation has demanded an increase in the number and strengthening of the HIV/AIDS intervention workforce to fight the pandemic. This has resulted in many individuals enrolling to undergo training in institutions of higher learning and the aftermath has been an increased number of graduates conducting research on various aspects of the disease. The purpose of this study is to generally assess the role that is being played by various institutions of higher leaning in South Africa in graduate preparedness as a means of empowering the country's HIV/AIDS intervention workforce. Using publication count, the study analyses research publications found indexed in SABINET's Current and Completed Research and the Union Catalog of Theses and Dissertations databases. Results are presented under the headings: empowerment trends: language of empowerment; institutions behind the empowerment: individuals behind the empowerment: "study leaders" and students; information sources for empowerment; purposes for which candidates were prepared (or empowered): and the areas/sectors of empowerment. Conclusions and recommendations as well as suggestions for further research are provided.Keywords: HIV, Acquired Immunodetlciency Syndrome, Infonnetrics, South Africa, Empowerment I INTRODUCTIONIn the business circles, the term empowerment refers to a condition whereby employees have the authority to make decisions and take action in their work placeswithout prior approval (www.asq.org/info/glossary/e.htm/) while to empower a community means to increase its ability to do things for itself, resulting to more skills, more confidence, and more effective organization on the part of the empowered community. Health professionals, on the other hand, define empowerment as a process of adding vitality, energy, and new powerful resources to a person (www.neurosemantics.com/ Articles/Glossary.htm). When these three definitions are put together, empowering a community and its labor force will mean enabling it to do things for itself through the allocation of financial resources, training of professionals in various fields of knowledge as well as the provision of relevant information that can aid in informed decision-making thereby enhancing a community's vitality, energy and human resources.Worldwide, universities are recognized for their role in human resources development. Countries all over the world do recognize the importance and role of universities and other institutions of higher learning such as diploma and certificate colleges in the promotion of research, training and community outreach and, in the process, have put in place mechanisms to improve research in various disciplines, including biomedicine. Policies have been formulated in countries such as South Africa in order to encourage as well as strengthen research in such areas as HIV/AIDS. For instance, in South Africa, the Ministry of Education -th...

Post-graduate research in information and knowledge management in LIS schools in South Africa

“…Table 4 indicates that most research was carried out at Masters level, which produced a total 163 (77%) records while the Doctoral research output totalled 48, accounting for 23% of total 210. A similar observation was made by Onyancha (2006) who cited that "[the] majority of studies were conducted at Masters Level of education while there was a favorable representation from the Doctorate candidates" in HIV/AIDS research in South Africa.…”

“…Although these values indicate some kind of relationship between the two databases' coverage of I&KM research, they nevertheless indicate that the contents of the databases are different as far as I&KM research by post-graduate research in South Africa is concerned. Onyancha (2006), too, observed that the coverage overlap ratio in HIV/AIDS research between the UCTD and C&CR was low and concluded that there were therefore differences as opposed to similarities in coverage of the contents of the two databases. It was also observed in the current study that C&CR yielded more records than UCTD.…”

“…3 Methodology This study follows the approach adopted by Onyancha (2006). Using informetric methods and more particularly publications count and content analysis, the study examines information and knowledge management publications with a view to determine the patterns of post-graduate research in the broad sub-field or topic of information and knowledge management.…”

Media coverage of climate change information by the Tanzania Guardian and Daily News in 2015

“…Informetrics is a method applicable in assessing, measuring and examining the pattern, impact and phenomenon of information produced in publications/literature, information sources and information retrieval processes (Onyancha 2006;Bar-Ilan and Peritz 2002;Diadato 1994). This study applied a descriptive informetric method which evaluates the publication count, characteristics and features of literature (Onyancha 2006). The method was used to examine and analyse articles on climate change published in the two newspapers under review.…”

Hello tomorrow? Sources of HIV / Aids information used by residential students at the University of Natal

“…For the literature on information provision and information sources for HIV/AIDS from the region see Onyancha (2006) and Onyancha and Ocholla (2006). Diko (2005) examined the use of billboards in the information campaign of LoveLife which sought to establish a new model of information provision targeted at reduction in high-risk sexual behaviour among young people.…”