SA completes baseline data collection

It has taken 3 months, but baseline data collection in South Africa was finally completed on Monday when students from the Mafikeng Campus of North West University became the last group to join the cohort. 42 students participated in this last round, bringing the total number of cohort members to 377.

Data entry will start next week. At the same time, we will also begin the process of verifying the contact details of the students from the first group of nursing training institutions to join the cohort: the Ann Latsky, Mmabatho and S.G. Lourens Nursing Colleges, as well as the University of Johannesburg. Updates on this will be posted in the next few weeks.

At last, some news from the Thai nursing cohort!

The cohort study started in Thailand several months ago, even before this website was created! This is why we have not provided much information on data collection. However, we are now analysing the collected data, and so it is a good opportunity to share some information about the Thai cohort members.

Since April, 342 nursing students have taken part in data collection activities. They came from 4 colleges scattered all over Thailand (see map below). The first group of 78 students came from a college located in Songkla, in the South of the country. The second group to join (82 students) came from the capital Bangkok. Another 65 students from the Northern city of Chiang Mai followed them, and finally we included in the cohort 117 nursing graduates from Ubon Ratchatani, in the Eastern part of the country.

Most nursing students in Thailand are female, hence it is not surprising that there are only 16 male cohort members! All the cohort members are very young, with the average age being just over 22 years (the oldest Thai cohort member is only 25 years old!!). None of the Thai cohort members have started their own families yet.

83% of the Thai cohort were born in rural areas, mostly in the North-Eastern province (around Ubon Ratchatani). Most attended a college in their birth province. However, amongst the cohort members from the North East, a third studied in Bangkok and a further 13% in Chiang Mai in the North.

The South African and Kenyan nursing students are still joining the cohort, but the Thai nurses have already started working. Most of them are expected to work near the college where they studied... to know for sure where they are, stay tuned, as the results of the first follow-up with the Thai nurses will soon be available !

NWU joins cohort

On Monday night, a small group of 9 nursing students from the Potchefstroom campus of North West University became the latest members of the CREHS Cohort in South Africa. The baseline data collection took place at the Sterkfontein Psychiatric Hospital, where they are currently working.

The South African cohort now has 335 members. We have already exceeded our initial target of 250 cohort members, but we hope to increase the total to close to 400 with one, final round of data collection in the next few weeks.

SA and Kenyan cohorts grow further

In the past two weeks or so almost 200 nursing students have been added to the CREHS Cohorts in South Africa and Kenya. Most recently, on 23 September, 73 very enthusiastic (picture above) students from Excelsius Nursing College in Klerksdorp in the North West Province of South Africa decided to participate in the research. This brings the total number of cohort members in South Africa to 326.

On the same day, the researchers in Kenya collected data from 31 distance learners from the Murang'a Medical Training College. On the 16th of September, 48 pre-service learners from the same college joined the cohort and a few days before that 29 distance learners from the Meru Medical Training College took part in the baseline data collection activities. Below is a picture of some of the participants from Meru.

The next stop for the South African study is Potchefstroom, where we hope to persuade students from North West University to participate in the research. In Kenya, the researchers hope to return to Meru Medical Training College in mid-October for further baseline data collection, this time with pre-service learners.

Watch this space!!

The Cohort Study just started in Kenya

The official beginning of the cohort study in the third country, Kenya took place yesterday. 55 final year nursing students from the Nairobi Medical Training College (MTC) actively took part in baseline data collection activities during several hours.


Refreshments were ready to help the students through all the data collection tools, and in the end, everybody seemed quite happy to have participated !


Those 55 students from Nairobi MTC are the first members of the Kenyan cohort, but they should soon be joined by others.



Early next week, more data collection at the Nairobi MTC will take place to include distance learning students. Soon after, other MTCs outside of Nairobi will also be visited, and more Kenyan nursing students will join their South African and Thai colleagues as CREHS cohort members!

SA cohort study gets first university students

A group of 4th year nursing students from the University of Johannesburg (UJ) yesterday became the first university students to join the CREHS Cohort Study in South Africa. So far, baseline data collection has only been done in nursing colleges - 1 in North West Province and 2 in Gauteng Province (see the posts below).

Including the 20 UJ students, the South African cohort now has 253 members.

In South Africa, the CREHS Cohort Study is being implemeted in North West and Gauteng Provinces. UJ was the last data collection site in Gauteng. We hope to finish the fieldwork in North West by the end of September 2008.

Data collection in South Africa

In South Africa, the aim is to recruit at least 250 fourth-year nursing students from selected nursing colleges in North West and Gauteng Provinces into the cohort. After the first three baseline data collection sessions (see the previous post), the cohort already has 233 members.

The first 37 members of the cohort came from the Mmabatho College of Nursing in North West They joined the cohort on 25 July.


Three days later, on 28 July, baseline data collection at S.G. Lourens Nursing College in Pretoria, added another 71 members to the cohort.


This past Tuesday we had another very good turnout, with the 125 students from the Ann Latsky College of Nursing in Johannesburg taking us past the 200-mark.


Thus far, in each of the colleges the baseline data collection has involved about 4 quite intense hours of questionnaire completion and focus group discussions. However, as the photographs show, it wasn't all hard work and after it all the cohort members still had something to smile about!!

In South Africa, baseline data collection is being planned in three more nursing training institutions. More updates on that to follow... In the meantime, why not let us know what you think about this website and your experience of the research so far? You can either write a comment or give us a quick feedback through the survey on the right hand side of the page.