HIV prevention in sub-Saharan Africa: a multilevel analysis of message frames and their social determinants

Abstract

In light of the great threat that HIV/AIDS poses in sub-Saharan Africa, the current study assesses HIV/AIDS posters from this region with specific reference to health message frames, including HIV sources, consequences, self-efficacy, preventive means, and barriers and benefits to employing such means of prevention. There is a two-step methodology. First, the content of HIV/AIDS posters from 15 sub-Saharan African countries was coded for the six health message frames. Second, relationships between the health message frames and four social determinants (HIV rate, HIV awareness, condom use and uncertainty avoidance (UAI)) were assessed with hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). Analysis indicates that self-efficacy is the most common frame, but that almost one-quarter of the posters has none of the six health message frames. HLM indicates some favorable findings, including that health message frames are used most often in countries with the most troubling levels of HIV awareness and condom use. Less favorably, health message frames are used least common in countries that have high levels of UAI and high HIV rates. Improvements for related media practices and policy are articulated.

HIV/AIDS messaging in Germany and Nigeria: A corpus linguistics study

“…An attempt such as ours to relate text content analysis to behavioural theory was previously made by Beaudoin (2007), who draws similar conclusions on a number of points. In his study of HIV messages from 15 sub-Saharan African countries, Beaudoin uses six health psychology variables that are similar to our four (termed "frames") and notes the following: "22.00% of the posters had zero frames, 14.40% had one frame, 31.40% had two frames, 17.40% had three frames, 12.30% had four frames, 21.10% had five frames and 0.40% had six frames" (Beaudoin 2007:202).…”

“…In his study of HIV messages from 15 sub-Saharan African countries, Beaudoin uses six health psychology variables that are similar to our four (termed "frames") and notes the following: "22.00% of the posters had zero frames, 14.40% had one frame, 31.40% had two frames, 17.40% had three frames, 12.30% had four frames, 21.10% had five frames and 0.40% had six frames" (Beaudoin 2007:202). He claims that attaining the goal of behaviour change is dependent on messages containing behavioural-change-relevant frames, and recommends that "potentially effective message frames should be infused in all HIV posters" (Beaudoin 2007(Beaudoin :2044. This is quite consistent with the EPPM predictions as applied to our data.…”

“…Perloff & Ray 1991;Treise & Weigold 2001, Beaudoin 2007, attention among communication scholars has largely been focused on audience response to the message, rather than on how several message features interact to predict or bring about response. For example, in a listing of the applications of one health communication model, only one of 14 entries was an analysis of the contents of messages; all the others were audience-based (Witte 1998).…”

Community Influences on Married Men’s Uptake of HIV Testing in Eight African Countries

“…Studies using a community level approach to investigating factors associated HIV and sexual health have generally focused on how the health infrastructure and care delivery in the community shape individual health outcomes, or how community perceptions of stigma around HIV/AIDS shape individual behavior [29, 30]. Other previous work has demonstrated an association between media exposure in the community and community socio-economic status and various HIV related outcomes [31–34]. Taken together, these studies confirm the importance of evaluating contextual influences on HIV related outcomes.…”

Effects of HealthWise South Africa on Condom Use Self-efficacy

“…Specific to this study are condom use intentions (Beaudoin 2007) and condom use self-efficacy, which is one of the most important factors in negotiating condom use (Hendriksen, Petifor, Lee, Coates & Rees 2007). Self-efficacy is a belief or confidence in one’s ability to take specific action, such as condom use.…”