Students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of parental practices on youth concerning HIV prevention: an exploratory study at Howard College.

Abstract

Despite many efforts put forward such as the Stepping Stones (Jewkes et al., 2008), the Collaborative HIV Prevention and Adolescent Mental Health Programme- South Africa known as CHAMP+SA (Bhana et al., 2010) and the 90-90-90 strategy (Huerga et al., 2018) to fight against the HIV epidemic especially amongst the youths aged between 15 and 24, the number of HIV cases within this age group seem to be increasing. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how young students from the University of KwaZulu-Natal perceive and experience the effectiveness of parental involvement in the prevention of HIV amongst the youth. In this study, a semi-structured interview schedule was used to collect data. Interviews were recorded with the consent of the participants using an audio-recorder. Thematic analysis was utilised to analyse the collected data. The thematic analysis helped in the development of various themes and sub-themes. The main themes that emerged were: the strong relationship between parents and children, active parental participation, monitoring youth activities, participants’ experiences and perceptions of the effectiveness of parental practices regarding HIV prevention amongst the youth, the role each parenting style plays in the prevention of HIV amongst youth, , and the impact of parental involvement in the prevention of HIV amongst the youth. The study found that parental practices and parenting styles were perceived as beneficial to the prevention of HIV amongst the youth, and factors that influence parental practices. The findings further showed that these factors can have either positive or negative impact on a child’s behaviour in relation to HIV prevention.