Tinent-wide from 1st February to 15th April 2005. More than 63,000 young men and women from

Author manuscript; accessible in PMC 2012 October 01.Winskell et al.Alence countries, in contrast, where threat may be thought of ubiquitous (Maman Pagedetailed codebook covering 65 HIV-related themes, including "commercial sex operate(er)", "multiple partners", "intentional infection", etc. More than 63,000 young people from 35 African countries participated in this contest, submitting around 23,000 narratives. For this study, we chosen six non-contiguous countries/ regions in which at the very least 500 narratives had been received, with estimated adult HIV prevalence prices in 2005 distributed along a near-exponential curve: Swaziland (33.four ), Namibia (19.6 ), Kenya (6.1 ), South-East Nigeria (3.9 ), Burkina Faso (two ), and Senegal(0.9 )(Figure 1)(UNAIDS, 2006). A questionnaire completed by all participants supplied data on socio-demographic variables (Table 1). This study was approved by Emory University Institutional Assessment Board. Possessing stratified the data by the sex, age (ten?4, 15?9 and 20?4) and urban/rural place on the author, we randomly selected ten narratives from every single on the twelve strata. In some countries specific strata contained fewer than ten narratives; therefore some nation samples have fewer than the maximum 120 narratives (Table two). In light in the size and cultural diversity of the Nigerian population, only these narratives from the Igbo-speaking SouthEast were sampled. An general sample of 586 texts for the six countries resulted. As contest participants self-select, the information isn't representative in the youth populations; participants are probably to become greater educated, and more knowledgeable and motivated about HIV than the basic youth population. As a solution from the identical contest mechanism, however, these biases are likely to be consistent across the six countries therefore the country samples, though not representative, are comparable for our purposes. Social representations are properties of social groups instead of people (Catherine Campbell title= S1679-45082016AO3696 et al., 2010). Our interest here lies together with the cultural meanings that frame HIV among this youth population in and across these nations. Data processing and analysis The sampled narratives were transcribed verbatim in English or French and entered into MAXQDA qualitative data evaluation application title= fmicb.2016.01082 (VERBI Application, 1989?010). Our analytical methodology combined: (i) descriptive statistics on specific quantifiable qualities on the narratives (e.g. regardless of whether an HIV-related death occurred); (ii) qualitative information analysis, focusing on thematically-related text segments and memoing for emergent analytical themes; and (iii) a narrative-based method, focusing on plot summary and thematic keywords and phrases. Inside the quantitative element, information have been double-entered in a database. Any discrepancies had been resolved by indicates of dialogue. The data have been transferred to Microsoft Excel, exactly where descriptive statistics were computed. For the qualitative element, descriptive codes (Miles Huberman, 1994) have been applied to the data with reference to aNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptSoc Sci Med. Author manuscript; offered in PMC 2012 October 01.Winskell et al.Pagedetailed codebook covering 65 HIV-related themes, like "commercial sex perform(er)", "multiple partners", "intentional infection", and so on. For the narrative-based element, a oneparagraph narrative summary, comprising the important elements of plot and message, was written title= 21645515.2016.1212143 for every single story and this was coded with as much as six (of 45 out there) keywords and phrases per story.