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R u there? : the user experience of Mobile Instant Messenger couselling

Includes bibliographical references.

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Groll, Nicholas Jay
Other Authors: Tredoux, Colin
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Department of Psychology 2015
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access_status_str Open Access
author Groll, Nicholas Jay
author2 Tredoux, Colin
author_browse Groll, Nicholas Jay
Tredoux, Colin
author_facet Tredoux, Colin
Groll, Nicholas Jay
author_sort Groll, Nicholas Jay
collection Thesis
description Includes bibliographical references.
format Thesis
id oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/13184
institution University of Cape Town (South Africa)
language eng
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:32:42.829Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2015
publishDateRange 2015
publishDateSort 2015
publisher Department of Psychology
publisherStr Department of Psychology
record_format dspace
source_str UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/13184 R u there? : the user experience of Mobile Instant Messenger couselling Groll, Nicholas Jay Tredoux, Colin Clinical Psychology Includes bibliographical references. Mental health care provision has always lagged behind general health services, especially in rural, poor countries. With the widespread adoption of mobile phones, many South Africans now have easy access to health-related information and services, including counselling via Mobile-Instant-Messenger (MIM). This research hopes to address the paucity of literature n MIM-based counselling. Using an adaptive, Mobile-based questionnaire, I collected quantitative and qualitative data about the service users (n= 568) of a popular MIM-counselling servicecalled ‘DAS/Angel’, offered free of charge, via MXit -a popular Mobile-Instant-Messenger program.The service user group was found to be predominantly young (Mage= 20.17, sd = 4.97), largely unemployed (44.19%), Black African (72.98%)with a gender split (53.79% female, 46.21% male) similar to population gender demography, χ2 (1, N = 567) = .43, p = .51. Despite the MIM-counselling being offered in English, service users’ first languages varied widely, across all 11 official South African languages. Qualitative data about the experience of using MIM-counselling was analysed using thematic analysis with two coders, with a significant level of agreement (κ> .80) across all 4 categorical datasets.The MIM-counselling experience was described positively as safe and accessible, which encouraged openness, and negatively in terms of practical concerns related to service access times, and specific shortfalls related to the quality of counselling provision. Reasons for non-use of MIM-counselling (n= 2285) were explored, as were experiences of using telephone counselling and face-to-face counselling. The findings are discussed in terms of concerns from the literature such as the lack of face-to-face contact and ethical issues of the medium. The ability of the medium to overcome access barriers to mental health care is considered in terms of the potential role of MIM-counselling. 2015-06-30T08:01:36Z 2015-06-30T08:01:36Z 2014 Master Thesis Masters MA http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13184 eng application/pdf Department of Psychology Faculty of Humanities University of Cape Town
spellingShingle Clinical Psychology
Groll, Nicholas Jay
R u there? : the user experience of Mobile Instant Messenger couselling
thesis_degree_str Master's
title R u there? : the user experience of Mobile Instant Messenger couselling
title_full R u there? : the user experience of Mobile Instant Messenger couselling
title_fullStr R u there? : the user experience of Mobile Instant Messenger couselling
title_full_unstemmed R u there? : the user experience of Mobile Instant Messenger couselling
title_short R u there? : the user experience of Mobile Instant Messenger couselling
title_sort r u there the user experience of mobile instant messenger couselling
topic Clinical Psychology
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13184
work_keys_str_mv AT grollnicholasjay rutheretheuserexperienceofmobileinstantmessengercouselling