I thought I would write a little blog to just to keep you up to date with my volunteer work for SNAP (Swaziland National Aids Program). On Wednesday, December 8, 2010, I went to Mbabane, the capital of Swaziland, to meet with the King’s Cabinet members to discuss some data that was collected to better understand the prevalence of stress and anxiety within the health care community. The government had hired a company to collect and analyze data for their study of over 2500 health care workers/participants from all over Swaziland. I was contacted by the office of the Swazi Minister of Health to come to a meeting, as an outside consultant, designed to overview the data and develop protocols to enhance the government’s psychological care. My assessment of their 85-page manual was that it was pretty lacking and I offered to take a more in depth look into how to make the data tell us something useful. Reluctantly, during the meeting I had to inform the other members of the cabinet (the ones who originally collected and analyzed the data) of some noticeable holes in the data. The team took my suggestions on ways they could clean up the data, but in the end, I noticed that the data, previously analyzed (by an outside source), needed to be revised. Seeing a need from the team and the possibilities of brushing up on my stats, I agreed to reanalyze the data. I plan on working on some validity and reliability studies once I get back stateside and then sending them my findings. I’m looking forward to continuing my relationship with the Swazi government and hope to, perhaps, get a publication out of the data.
-Ben
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