Effectiveness of sources of HIV/AIDS awareness in a rural community in Imo State, Nigeria

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: The effectiveness of each of the 14 sources of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) awareness available to women and adolescent girls dwelling in a rural community in Imo State, Nigeria was measured in order to understand the relative contribution of the sources to the general knowledge about human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/AIDS possessed by the women and the girls. METHODS: The details of the research methods adopted in this study, which involved 734 in-school and out-of-school adolescents and 434 women, have been described previously [Nwagwu, W. Di Nwanna and the reproductive health of the girl child in Imo State, Nigeria. Final Report (04 83064 000 GSS) submitted to MacArthur Fund for Leadership and Development, Abuja, 2006]. RESULTS: Friends and relatives emerged as the most effective source of AIDS awareness for women (29%), followed by community meetings (26%) and then television (20%), whereas the most effective sources for the girls were television (28%), followed by friends and relatives, and radio (17% and 14.4%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Each of the information sources listed made some contribution to the general knowledge about HIV/AIDS possessed by the respondents, although the level of awareness would have been low among women in the absence of friends and relatives, and among the girls in the absence of television. Information awareness programmes should be selected according to the needs of social groups and the most effective information sources concentrated upon.     

Speaking up for vocabulary: reading skill differences in young adults

This study is part of a broader project aimed at developing cognitive and neurocognitive profiles of adolescent and young adult readers whose educational and occupational prospects are constrained by their limited literacy skills. We explore the relationships among reading-related abilities in participants ages 16 to 24 years spanning a wide range of reading ability. Two specific questions are addressed: (a) Does the simple view of reading capture all nonrandom variation in reading comprehension? (b) Does orally assessed vocabulary knowledge account for variance in reading comprehension, as predicted by the lexical quality hypothesis? A comprehensive battery of cognitive and educational tests was employed to assess phonological awareness, decoding, verbal working memory, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, word knowledge, and experience with print. In this heterogeneous sample, decoding ability clearly played an important role in reading comprehension. The simple view of reading gave a reasonable fit to the data, although it did not capture all of the reliable variance in reading comprehension as predicted. Orally assessed vocabulary knowledge captured unique variance in reading comprehension even after listening comprehension and decoding skill were accounted for. We explore how a specific connectionist model of lexical representation and lexical access can account for these findings.     

Scientific practice and the tradition of advocacy in special education

The purpose of this discussion is to describe and contrast several tenets of scientific behavior and practice with the behaviors and practices associated with advocacy. We argue that scientists must focus their efforts on solvable problems, consider their efforts to be uncertain, and present their findings dispassionately, so that others might judge the evidence for themselves. Advocates, in contrast, must confront the problems facing the people for whom they have concern over whether the problems appear to be solvable or not. Furthermore, advocacy requires a certainty of conviction that leads to the promotion of particular positions and their adoption by others. We suggest that although special education's roots are more closely aligned with advocacy than with science, its future depends on its ability to adopt a more fully scientific approach to practice. We conclude with a discussion of how the assignment of test accommodations to students with disabilities illustrates the tension between science and advocacy.