Independent evaluation of the SAPLER peer counselling programme
December 1999
Evaluator: Dr Martin Terre Blanche, Department of Psychology, University of South Africa
Consultant: Prof Mohamed Seedat, Unisa Institute for Social and Health Sciences
Executive summary
Sapler is an NGO which places young people from the community ("pioneers") in schools to present safe sexuality education to learners in an informal and accessible manner. This evaluation covers both stakeholder perceptions of the Sapler programme and the actual impact of the programme.
To evaluate stakeholder perceptions the views of 229 learners, 4 school principals, 4 pioneers, and 9 guidance teachers, as well as Sapler management and several individuals involved in primary health care services were obtained. Learners’ perceptions were overwhelmingly positive, with around 80% agreeing or agreeing strongly with each of four positive statements about pioneers. Other stakeholders also had overwhelmingly favourable opinions of Sapler - both in terms of the basic idea and in terms of the way in which it has been implemented.
Learners describe pioneers as willing to take their questions seriously, caring, open and having a high degree of personal integrity. Although they describe pioneers as keen to engage in open discussion, they are also seen as quite directive about key safe sex issues such as abstaining from sex, avoiding promiscuity and using contraceptives. Other stakeholders describe pioneers as having a strongly positive effect on learners.
An important area of concern is the fairly limited time pioneers are able to spend with learners and it is suggested that becoming an official part of the education department’s sexuality education strategy may address this.
To assess the impact of the Sapler programme learners from four schools where Sapler has been active were compared with learners from three similar schools where it has not had a presence. It was found that learners at Sapler schools obtained better scores on measures of safe sex knowledge, safe sex attitudes, condom use and self-reported low risk behaviour.
Of these the difference in attitudes is statistically significant and the difference in low risk behaviour approaches significance. In addition, it was found that learners from Sapler schools who had positive safe sex attitudes were also statistically significantly more likely to report engaging only in low risk behaviours. The same was not true for learners from other schools.
Although learners’ overall level of safe sex knowledge was high, it was found that a proportion of learners suffer from specific knowledge deficits that should be remedied. These deficits included an incomplete awareness that STDs and HIV/AIDS can be a symptomatic and that "morning after" contraception is possible, as well as uncertainty about the possible side-effects of masturbation and the long-term efficacy of the family planning injection.
Promiscuous behaviour was found to remain an important issue - also among learners from Sapler schools - despite their professed opposition to such behaviour. Boys’ selective endorsement of male promiscuity was also highlighted as a potential problem.
Boxed recommendations can be found throughout the report and as a combined list in Appendix C.