Parenting AIDS-orphaned grandchildren: experiences from Lephalale, South Africa

This study explored experiences of grandparents assuming the role of parenting their AIDS-orphaned grandchildren in the Lephalale local municipality, Limpopo province, South Africa. Qualitative face-face interviews were conducted with ten (10) black African grandmothers aged 55 to 71 years. The participating elderly women were self-identified as carers for their AIDS-orphaned grandchildren. The challenges they faced in caring for their grandchildren were identified as the following: recurrent experiences of loss and grief, lack of social support, fear of stigmatization, financial constraints, mental health and physical strain, difficulty in acquiring state social grants, emotional distress, the caring role being divinely ordained and the rejection of orphans by their biological fathers. The challenges of caring facing the grandmothers are enormous. They require that the grandmothers be assisted not only to care for others, but to care for themselves too. The results of this study imply, among other things, that the non-contributory pension and child support grants disbursed by the South African government to elderly persons and other deserving individuals should be improved and maintained to sustain families and destitute persons

The role of sex in the prevalence rates and psychological consequences of cyberbullying among learners in the Limpopo Province, South Africa

The study recorded the prevalence rates of cyberbullying and investigated its psychological outcomes among 324 secondary school learners in the Kgakotlou school circuit, Limpopo Province, South Africa. Learners completed an instrument consisting of objective questionnaires on cyberbullying, psychological distress and demographic details. Whereas the average rates of being cyberbullied were just below eight percent for the whole sample, females were the most cyberbullied (11%). Rates of cyberbullying were just over 5% and those of cyberbullied-bullying were just over 3%. Only the cyberbullying type main effect on psychological distress was found, with learners who were not cyberbullied reporting relatively less psychological distress. The sex variable renders unique findings in the study of cyberbullying involvement in the Kgakotlou district, a factor that must sensitize researchers to the uniqueness of cyberbullying experiences in a particular area of Limpopo, and South Africa. The same applies to experiences of psychological distress among cyberbullying-involved learners.Keywords: Cyberbullying, learners, psychological distres

Factorial validity of the death obsession scale in African University students

In this study the factor structure of the Death Obsession Scale (DOS) was examined using confirmatory factor analysis. Data used consisted of DOS reports of 328 Black African students. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that two- and three-factor models obtained among female and male African students, respectively, provided the best fit to the data. The two factors in female African students were Death Rumination and Apprehension, and the three factors of their male counterparts were Death Ruminations, Apprehension, and Comprehensibility of Death. Factor intercorrelations did not resolve the dimensionality issue of the measure, leading to the conclusion that the factors must be investigated further.http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/udst202016-08-30hb201

Confirming the structure of the dual process model of diversity amongst public sector South African employees

We set out to validate the structure of the Dual Process Model of Workplace Diversity in a South African work setting contrasting black and white African employees. The study participants were a convenience sample of 296 public service employees (black = 73.3%, female = 59%, 90.7% between the age 18 and 40 years; white = 25.7%, female = 58%, 67.1% between the age of 18 and 40 years). They completed measures of acculturation antecedents (positive and negative conditions), mediators (integration as positive strategy to deal with diversity and separation as negative strategy), and outcomes (work success and ill-health). Using multi-group path analysis, we found race-based invariance of the Dual Process Model, with black employees self-reporting diversity relations in a more favourable way compared to white employees. We conclude that the Dual Process Model is supported for research use in the South African workplaces