A critical review of peer education with young people with special reference to sexual health

Abstract

This paper presents a critical review of selected literature about peer education initiatives with young people principally in the area of sexual health. Reported work in this area was found to be diverse in terms of aims, objectives, methods, findings and levels of evaluation. The paper highlights the promise of the method but draws attention to its potential problems. Examples of peer health education are reviewed and the issues surrounding them discussed. These include: theoretical background, rationales, cultural constraints, ethical and operational issues, and the challenges for monitoring and evaluation. The paper concludes by suggesting that practitioners and evaluators must reflect on the difficulties inherent in artificially reconstructing a social process.

A systematic review of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of peer-based interventions to maintain and improve offender health in prison settings

“…Additionally, there was weak evidence indicating an association between the uptake of screening/HIV testing and peer health education programmes. 125,144 These findings support rationales for peer education as a means of increasing social influence and positive social norms, 24,95 but further research is needed to explore the relative importance of peer education as a factor in the uptake of these health services.…”

“…None of the included studies examined the relationship between recruitment and selection processes and any outcomes, even qualitatively. This finding is somewhat surprising given the theoretical basis of peer interventions 95,96 and the questions raised in the expert symposium on the contextual nature of peer identity. Further research is needed to explore assumptions about the attributes of peers in relation to the effectiveness of peer-based interventions.…”

“…94,95 There are various rationales advanced for peer education, including accessing 'hard-to-reach' or socially excluded populations, 165 the influence of social networks and opportunities for positive social modelling and reinforcement of social norms 95 and personal development and empowerment of peer educators. 166 Peer education has been widely applied in the prison setting, particularly in relation to the prevention of HIV infection and risk reduction.…”

Mobilizing collective identity to reduce HIV risk among sex workers in Sonagachi, India: The boundaries, consciousness, negotiation framework

“…Scholars have criticized the scholarship on peer and community-led interventions as being atheoretical (Milburn, 1995;Turner & Shepherd, 1999). Campbell and MacPhail (2002) point out that scholars examining these interventions have often conducted quantitative community trials which evaluate their effectiveness without identifying why they work.…”

Peer education, gender and the development of critical consciousness: participatory HIV prevention by South African youth

“…Peer education has been described as "a method in search of a theory" (Turner & Shepherd, 1999) and it has also been argued that peer education "suffers from an inadequately specified theoretical base". (Milburn, 1995) This dearth of theory is reflected in existing research into peer education, which tends to take the form of quantitative outcome evaluations of interventions (MacPhail & Campbell, 1999). Such studies usually describe the extent to which programs result in changes in target individuals' HIV-related knowledge, attitudes and reported behaviours, with little systematic discussion of the processes whereby peer education has its allegedly beneficial effects on health.…”