Towards establishing the equivalence of the English version of the verbal analogies scale of the Woodcock Munuz Language Survey across English and Xhosa first language speakers

Magister Artium - MAIn the majority of the schools in South Africa (SA), learners commence education in English. This English milieu poses a considerable challenge for English second-language speakers. In an attempt to bridge the gap between English as the main medium of instruction and the nine indigenous languages of the country and assist with the implementation of mother-tongue based bilingual education, this study focuses on the cross-validation of a monolingual English test used in the assessment of multilingual or bilingual learners in the South African context. This test, namely the Woodcock Muñoz Language Survey (WMLS), is extensively used in the United States in Additive Bilingual Education in the country. The present study is a substudy of a broader study, in which the original WMLS (American-English version) was adapted into SA English and Xhosa. For this specific sub-study, the researcher was interested in investigating the scalar equivalence of the adapted English version of the Verbal Analogies (VA) subscale of the WMLS across English first-language speakers and Xhosa first-language speakers. This was achieved by utilising differential item functioning (DIF) and construct bias statistical techniques. The Mantel-Haenszel DIF detection method was employed to detect DIF, while construct equivalence was examined by means of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) utilising an a priori two-factor structure. The Tucker's phi coefficient was used to assess the congruence of the construct across the two language groupsSouth Afric

Enablers and inhibitors associated with the willingness to participate in child safety initiatives

Safety is a priority in South Africa, a country with amongst the highest recorded rates of violence and injury, with children a vulnerable group. The greatest opportunities for reducing the burden of violence and injury   amongst children lies in the prevention of harmful environments and situations. Information on the psychosocial inhibitors and enablers of child safety promotion interventions are required to enhance and assure the efficacy of interventions. The determination of context-specific information is expected to be of considerable benefit to community uptake and impact of safety interventions. The primary aim of this study is to determine the factors that enable or inhibit the willingness to participate in child safety interventions. This qualitative study is located in a historically marginalised and under-resourced community consisting of low-cost government housing and backyard dwellings and situated 4km outside of Strand in the Western Cape, South Africa. Eleven interviews were conducted with long standing community members who had either attended, had knowledge on, or experience of child safety initiatives conducted in their community. The study utilised a thematic analysis within a Person-Process-Context-Time theoretical framework. The findings indicate that willingness to participate is influenced by multiple and interconnected enablers and inhibitors. The personal, relational and environmental factors included: muted individual agency (comprised of hopelessness and struggling alone, scepticism, and experiences of daily living struggles); community care provision (limited community connectedness, care and concern for children, and neighbourliness); and structural, physical and social constraints (competing priorities, unequal power relations, and physical community impediments

Community engagement in instrument design: The Delphi Consensus Technique

Institute for Social and Health Studies (ISHS

Navigating and Reimagining Community Engagement amidst COVID-19

Community engagement is a critical manifestation of a humanising approach on how to respond to various psychosocial and structural violence challenges in the context of a pandemic. Community engagement within the context of the current global coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) requires creative and innovative responses. Institutions have had to reconfigure their community engagement due to restrictive measures instituted by governments to curb the spread of the virus. This paper aims to reflect on the conversations and experiences of community activist researchers in implementing creative ways of engagement to address pertinent psychosocial and structural violence issues affecting communities during COVID-19. Through a qualitative reflexive approach, we identified the following themes: (1) Challenges in community-engaged research during a pandemic; (2) Structural violence and psychosocial issues; and (3) Innovative opportunities to bridge gaps and confront community realities. The pandemic has produced challenges but has also allowed for opportunities to reimagine community engagement. It has created opportunities and novel ways of collaborating with multisectoral social actors to address the psychosocial challenges during the pandemic and to remain actively engaged with communities

Validation of an Assessment Tool to Measure Psycho-Social Factors Associated With Willingness to Participate in Child-Centered Initiatives

The aim of the paper was the validation of a psychosocial assessment tool for determining willingness to participate in child-centered safety promotion interventions, specifically in a low-income community in South Africa. A study was conducted as part of the initial validation to test the items and format the questionnaire. The instrument was then administered to Afrikaans speaking individuals in a community in the Western Cape. Iterative exploratory factor analysis was conducted at both the item and scale levels to select and reassign items and scales to determine the final composition of the questionnaire. The findings indicate that the instrument measures seven factors, namely incentives; priorities and community needs; perceived benefits; social approval; accessibility and values; altruistic capital; and community cohesion, which represents salient dimensions of the construct willingness to participate in interventions. The questionnaire and its subscales displayed acceptable to good reliability, with Cronbach’s α ranging from .55 to .80. Since willingness precedes actual participation, it is argued that insight into the factors that relate to willingness to participate provides an avenue for motivating actual participation.The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The project was funded by the University of South Africa, the South African Medical Research Council, and the National Research Foundation.Institute for Social and Health Studies (ISHS

Caregivers’ and interventionists’ perceptions of a child-centered home visitation intervention

Home visitation is an intervention approach for families at risk of poor child outcomes. Negative outcomes include malnutrition, the risk of unintentional injuries, and child maltreatment, to mention a few. The effectiveness, appropriateness, and feasibility of Home Visitation Programmes (HVPs) remain under-researched in middle- to low-income settings. This study constitutes one component of a formative evaluation of a child-centred home visitation intervention in a low-income South African community. The aim of the study was to explore caregivers’ and interventionists’ perceptions of the content and delivery of the intervention. To this end the study employed qualitative methods, which included seven focus groups with caregivers and interventionists. The data were thematically analysed upon which four themes emerged namely human agency, accessibility to the intervention, attributes of the intervention, and safety-health behaviour, and are presented according to the Process–Person–Context–Time model. This study contributes to the science and praxis on conducting evidence-based home visitation interventions in a resource-constrained setting

Caregivers’ and interventionists’ perceptions of a child-centered home visitation intervention

Home visitation is an intervention approach for families at risk of poor child outcomes. Negative outcomes include malnutrition, the risk of unintentional injuries, and child maltreatment, to mention a few. The effectiveness, appropriateness, and feasibility of Home Visitation Programmes (HVPs) remain under-researched in middle- to low-income settings. This study constitutes one component of a formative evaluation of a child-centred home visitation intervention in a low-income South African community. The aim of the study was to explore caregivers’ and interventionists’ perceptions of the content and delivery of the intervention. To this end the study employed qualitative methods, which included seven focus groups with caregivers and interventionists. The data were thematically analysed upon which four themes emerged namely human agency, accessibility to the intervention, attributes of the intervention, and safety-health behaviour, and are presented according to the Process–Person–Context–Time model. This study contributes to the science and praxis on conducting evidence-based home visitation interventions in a resource-constrained setting

Investigating item and construct bias in an English verbal analogies scale

For this study the researcher was interested in investigating the scalar equivalence of the adapted English version of the verbal analogies (VA) subscale of the Woodcock Muñoz Language Survey (WMLS) across English first-language speakers and Xhosa first-language speakers. This was achieved by utilising differential item functioning (DIF) and construct bias statistical techniques. The Mantel-Haenszel DIF detection method was employed to detect DIF, while construct equivalence was examined by means of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) utilising an a priori two-factor structure. The Tucker’s phi coefficient was used to assess the congruence of the construct across the two language groups. The sample consisted of 192 English and 193 Xhosa first-language learners, who were selected from ex-Model C and previously disadvantaged schools in the Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown region. The main findings of this study indicated that the adapted English version of the VA scale displayed DIF items across the two language groups. Moreover, construct equivalence could only be established for one factor across the two language groups, as the second factor displayed non-negligible incongruities even after the removal of DIF items.Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2012, 30(3): 325–33