Perceptions of organizational value and unethical/deviant behaviors among lecturers in Archeology and Religion and Cultural Studies: An intervention study.

BACKGROUND: Understanding an organization's ethical standards assists employees in abiding by stipulated rules and regulations and reduces the prevalent rate of inappropriate behaviors. Unfortunately, some workers do not know and as a result, they become dysfunctional, affecting their professional identities. Given this, scholars have called for psychoeducational strategies that coach workers to improve their perceptions. With this in mind, we investigated the impact of psychoeducational coaching on workplace ethical perceptions and deviant behaviors among lecturers in Archeology and Religion and Cultural Studies. METHODS: A group randomized control design was adopted, and a sample of lecturers was assigned to intervention and control groups using a simple allocation sequence method. Three dependent measures were used to assess the participants' irrational beliefs, work values, and deviant behaviors before the intervention, after, and 2 months later as a follow-up test. Data collected were cued into SPSS version 28. A multivariate analysis was performed to test postulated hypotheses at .05 probability level. RESULTS: The results showed that rational-emotive behavior occupational coaching has a significant impact on reducing unethical work values and work-deviant behaviors among lecturers in Archeology and Religion and Cultural Studies. The finding of this study justified the effectiveness of rational-emotive behavior therapy (REBT) approaches in treating irrational beliefs that occasioned work-deviant behaviors among the employees. CONCLUSION: It is concluded in this study that rational-emotive behavior occupational coaching is beneficial and effective in decreasing unethical work values and work-deviant behaviors among lecturers in Archeology and Religion and Cultural Studies. Therefore, REBT practitioners should liaise with lecturers in Archeology and Religion and Cultural Studies to advance the practice of REBT in workplaces.

Testing the impact of occupational intervention on professional ethics and values of Staff in University Medical Centers.

BACKGROUND: The level of commitment to jobs is the driver of how much a worker could offer to those that need the services. People become poised to deliver services when they hold the job in high esteem. Evidence abounds that some workers in public services barely value their professional responsibilities and conduct. This motivated the present researchers to test the impacts of rational emotive behavioral occupational intervention (REBOI) on the professional ethics and values of Staff in University Medical Centers. METHODS: to achieve the above aim, a randomized control design was used. A total of 114 staff were recruited, assessed 3 times using 3 instruments, and coached by therapists. The coaching last for 12 sessions. The data collected were subjected to a multivariate statistical analysis to test how effective the intervention was in changing negative perceptions about values and ethics in workplaces. RESULTS: It was found that REBOI changes negative perceptions about professional ethics and values among staff of medical centers. The effectiveness of the REBOI is not statistically influenced by gender and group interaction. Gender does not moderate the impact of the intervention. CONCLUSION: This study finally suggests that REBOI effectively changes negative perceptions about values and ethics among health workers. Thus, recommends for the advancement of Ellis' principles in other workplaces and across populations.

Psychological intervention for career self-esteem among students of agricultural education programme.

BACKGROUND: This study determined the efficacy of rational career intervention on career self-esteem of students of Agricultural education programmed in Universities in Southeast Nigeria. METHODS: Data were collected from a sample of 54 students. The sampled students were allocated to 2 (treatment and control) groups using the sequence allocation software package. Students in the treatment group were counseled through a rational career intervention programmed that lasted for 12 sessions while similar students in the control group were not treated. The 2 groups of students were then assessed 3 times based on a career self-esteem scale. Data collected were analyzed using Analysis of variance and partial eta square statistical tools. RESULTS: The study's findings indicated a strong impact of rational career intervention on career self-esteem levels. The findings also showed that group and gender interaction effects had a substantial impact on the professional self-esteem scores of students in agricultural education. The findings also indicated a statistically significant relationship between time and students career self-esteem in agricultural education. The findings also showed that the group and time interaction effect had a substantial impact on the professional self-esteem scores of students in agricultural education. The follow-up findings showed that the rational career intervention has a long-term impact on career self-esteem among students in Agricultural Education. CONCLUSION: It was concluded that rational career intervention is useful in improving self-esteem among students of agricultural education in universities in Southeast Nigeria. It was then recommended that year-1 students should be counseled immediately after registration.

Exploring children's formal help-seeking behaviour for violence in Zimbabwe: analysis of national survey and routine service provider data.

OBJECTIVES: To explore knowledge of formal services and help-seeking behaviour for violence among Zimbabwean children aged 18 years and under. DESIGN: We use cross-sectional data from the 2017 Zimbabwe Violence Against Children Survey (VACS), which is nationally representative and had a 72% response rate for female participants and 66% for males; and anonymised routine data from one of the largest child protection service providers' (Childline Zimbabwe) call database. SETTING: Zimbabwe. PARTICIPANTS: We analysed data from 13 to 18 year old participants in the 2017 VACS and pertaining to respondents aged 18 years and under from Childline Zimbabwe's call database. MEASURES/ANALYSIS: We describe characteristics of children, and fit unadjusted and logistic regression models to estimate associations between selected characteristics and help-seeking knowledge and behaviours. RESULTS: 1339 of 4622 children aged 13-18 years surveyed for the 2017 VACS in Zimbabwe (29.8%) reported experience of lifetime physical and/or sexual violence. Of these, 829 (57.3%) children did not know where to seek formal help, 364 (33.1%) children knew where to seek help but did not, and 139 (9.6%) children knew where to seek help and did seek help. Boys were more likely to know where to seek help, but girls were more likely to actually seek help. During the 6-month period when VACS survey data were being collected, Childline received 2177 calls where the main reason for the call was recorded as violence against someone aged 18 years or under. These 2177 calls contained more reports from girls and children in school, versus the national profile of children who had experienced violence. Few children who did not seek help reported not wanting services. Most children who did not seek help reported that they felt at fault or that their safety would be put at risk by disclosure. CONCLUSION: Both awareness of services and help-seeking are gendered, suggesting that different strategies may be needed to support boys and girls to access the help they want. Childline in particular may be well placed to expand its outreach to boys and to receive more reports of school-related violence, and should consider efforts to reach out-of-school children.

Remote methods for research on violence against women and children: lessons and challenges from research during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Collecting data to understand violence against women and children during and after the COVID-19 pandemic is essential to inform violence prevention and response efforts. Although researchers across fields have pivoted to remote rather than in-person data collection, remote research on violence against women, children and young people poses particular challenges. As a group of violence researchers, we reflect on our experiences across eight studies in six countries that we redesigned to include remote data collection methods. We found the following areas were crucial in fulfilling our commitments to participants, researchers, violence prevention and research ethics: (1) designing remote data collection in the context of strong research partnerships; (2) adapting data collection approaches; (3) developing additional safeguarding processes in the context of remote data collection during the pandemic; and (4) providing remote support for researchers. We discuss lessons learnt in each of these areas and across the research design and implementation process, and summarise key considerations for other researchers considering remote data collection on violence.

National COVID-19 lockdown and trends in help-seeking for violence against children in Zimbabwe: an interrupted time-series analysis.

BACKGROUND: An estimated 1.8 billion children live in countries where COVID-19 disrupted violence prevention and response. It is important to understand how government policies to contain COVID-19 impacted children's ability to seek help, especially in contexts where there was limited formal help-seeking prior to the pandemic. We aimed to quantify how the national lockdown in Zimbabwe affected helpline calls for violence against children, estimated the number of calls that would have been received had the lockdown not occurred and described characteristics of types of calls and callers before and after the national lockdown. METHODS: We used an interrupted time series design to analyse the proportion of violence related calls (17,913 calls out of 57,050) to Childline Zimbabwe's national child helpline between 2017 to 2021. We applied autoregressive integrated moving average regression (ARIMA) models to test possible changes in call trends before and after the March 2020 lockdown and forecasted how many calls would have been received in the absence of lockdown. In addition, we examined call characteristics before and after lockdown descriptively. RESULTS: The proportion of violence related calls decreased in the 90 days after the lockdown and subsequently returned to pre-COVID-19 levels. We estimate that 10.3% (95% confidence interval [CI] 6.0-14.6%) more violence related calls would have occurred in this period had there not been a lockdown. Violence was increasingly reported as occurring in children's households, with fewer reports from children and formal child protection actors. CONCLUSIONS: Lockdowns dramatically change everyday life and strain populations, which is unlikely to reduce violence prevalence but may reduce help-seeking. The three months after COVID-19 lockdowns may be key time periods when help-seeking for violence decreases drastically. Policy makers should ensure that in-person and remote services support help-seeking. Interventions and campaigns may additionally want to target adult female family members in encouraging reporting of suspected violence cases when they occur within households and are perpetuated by other family members. We suggest a composite approach of scaling-up remote reporting mechanisms that are accessible and geographically well-distributed, establishing non-traditional sites for help seeking within communities and continuing limited in-person home visitation for known cases of violence.

Cognitive-behaviour intervention for critical thinking disposition of religion and social science students.

BACKGROUND: The dispositions of students towards critical thinking (CT) no doubt improve their clinical practice and performance. Hence, efforts to explore ways to help students become aware and conscious of the need for CT are imperative for their self-actualization, development, and improved professional practice. It is worrisome that in spite of the limited intervention addressing CT disposition challenges, scholars are yet to study the problem, especially in developing countries. METHODS: In view of that, we assessed how CT disposition can be improved among students enrolled in cognitive-behavioral reflective training programme (CBRT-P) using a group-randomized control study with three months follow-up. To achieve this, 163 students were allocated to different groups. The recruited participants were exposed to CBRT-P. RESULTS: Repeated-measures analysis performed shows that at the posttest, the mean CT disposition scores of the participants enrolled in CBRT-programme (treatment group) were significantly greater compared to the counterpart group that is the comparison group. At the third assessment, the mean score of the dependent measure consistently remained higher in favor of the experimental group. CONCLUSION: Given the results, it is concluded that the treatment programme improves the CT disposition of students over time.

'I went there in an effort to help the child, but you can see there is corruption in the world': Adults' conceptualisations and enactments of child protection in schools in a challenging context.

Schools have the potential to be sites of support for vulnerable children, but can also be sites of violence perpetration. In this qualitative study we explore how adult school stakeholders in and around two public Catholic primary schools in Zimbabwe conceptualise and enact child protection. We analysed our findings in light of the protracted economic crisis in Zimbabwe; the current policy context for child protection; and the Covid-19 pandemic. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 adult education stakeholders in and around one rural and one urban school in the Harare Archdiocese, from October 2020 to January 2021. This comprised 12 school-level stakeholders, including teachers (N = 4), parents (N = 4), school priests (N = 2), and headteachers (N = 2), who were the main focus of this study, and a further 6 high-level education actors. We employed thematic analysis. Adults in this study placed considerable responsibility on children to protect themselves, with often unreasonably high expectations of children's capacity to prevent abuse. At times they also blamed and stigmatised children, which was gendered, and particularly emerged around adolescent sexuality. Our findings suggest that this was linked to social norms around discipline, protection and gender, but in particular, the way these emerged in relation to the challenges of the context. Policy and interventions to promote child protection in schools in Zimbabwe should incorporate both an attention to the challenges teachers face in contexts of adversity, as well as address a tendency for adult school stakeholders to hold children responsible for their own protection.