In view of the high prevalence of HIV and AIDS in South Africa, particularly among adolescents, the Departments of Health and Education have proposed a school-based HIV counselling and testing (HCT) campaign to reduce HIV infections and sexual risk behaviour. Through the use of semi-structured interviews, our qualitative study explored perceptions of parents regarding the ethico-legal and social implications of the proposed campaign. Despite some concerns, parents were generally in favour of the HCT campaign. However, they were not aware of their parental limitations in terms of the Children's Act. Their views suggest that the HCT campaign has the potential to make a positive contribution to the fight against HIV and AIDS, but needs to be well planned. To ensure the campaign's success, there is a need to enhance awareness of the programme. All stakeholders, including parents, need to engage in the programme as equal partners.

[1] that appeared in the January SAMJ. The article claims to explore parents' views on the HIV counselling and testing campaign to be conducted in high schools, within an interpretative qualitative paradigm. This is an interesting and important topic. However, the methodology of the study is deeply flawed and unfortunately gives qualitative research a bad name. While the authors' sampling for a qualitative study was acceptable, it is unclear what their 'snowballing' means. Since there are so many parents of children in high school (and it is not a sensitive issue to be such a parent), it is unclear why snowballing was necessary; in fact, it creates an unnecessary clustering of possibly like-minded people. This, however, is not my main objection (nor is their description of 'black' people as one ethnic group). My main problem with the methodology is that all the data that are presented are quantitative. If this was a quantitative study, then of course the sample of 20 and the sampling process would be woefully inadequate. Presenting the numbers in this context has no meaning and is irrelevant. Had this study been a quantitative one with an adequate sample, it might have had some validity. However, it fails on both qualitative and quantative fronts.The writers present almost no qualitative data and do not contextualise these data in any way. The reader does not know whether the respondent who said something was a woman or a man, and we do not even know how the interviews were conducted, in what language, where and by whom, or how the data were captured and analysed.Qualitative methodology is a well-documented science. In the health sphere it is used in order to see the social world from the perspective of the actor (in this case the parents), and to understand behaviour in the context of meaning systems used by a particular group (in this case parents in Kathlehong). It aims to be fluid and flexible and encourages discovering novel and unanticipated findings.'The validity, meaningfulness and insights generated from qualitative enquiry have more to do with the information richness of the cases selected and the observational/analytical capabilities of the researcher than with the sample size. ' R Gwandure