Article Review

Article Review

What is the research problem?

The research problems revolve around the three basic questions. These include the instances of perceived stigma by PLWHIV in relation to family/friends, sexual partners, health personnel, and co-workers/employers. It also attempts to answer the causal attributions that affect the perception of people living with HIV as being innocent or guilty and the role of attributes in social relations of PLWHIV. This paper primarily focused on social relations of PLWHIV in Turkey to find out instances of perceived stigma and the causal attributions affecting the perception of people living with HIV/AIDS.

What was the research question?

The research question is based on the perceived stigma by PLWHIV in relation to the “Vulnerability Assessment of People Living with HIV in Turkey”. Moreover the research has some sociological concepts such as stigma and gender, which in turn have been used for further analysis. As a research team, we traced the concepts rising from the data. Therefore, in this study, we focus on HIV-positive people's relationships with significant others in order to develop a deep understanding of the stigma-construction process.

Very briefly, according to the literature review, what do we already know about the topic

The literature review provides sufficient knowledge about the basics of the research. Stigma is defined as an attribute that is deeply discrediting and a process by which the reaction of others spoils normal identity. This is because an individual with an attribute that is highly discrediting in a society faces rejection. Therefore, to understand how stigma is constructed in a society, it is crucial to focus on attributions on a sociological level.

HIV and AIDS carry most of the characteristics associated with heavily stigmatized medical conditions. First of all, people living with HIV/AIDS are associated with socially improper forms of sex and intravenous drug use, socially censured behaviors that are assumed as the responsibility of the individual. The instrumental stigma that refers to fear of contagion can be the dominant type across cultures, but the symbolic stigmatizing differs among cultures. Hence, the discrimination as a result of HIV-related stigma also varies according to cultural context.

In addition, in Attribution Theory, if an aspect of self is perceived to be causing an event, the attribution is called internal; on the other hand if something or someone in the environment is perceived to be causing it, the attribution is called external. Thus, according to attribution theory, individuals are constantly drawing inferences regarding the cause of particular events or behaviors. Therefore, to understand how discrimination takes place in the case of HIV/AIDS, these causal thoughts and emotions that contribute to this discrimination are critical. Symbolic HIV/AIDS stigma that might result in discrimination could be associated with the rejection of help-giving basing on perceived responsibility.

How do you know this is a qualitative article? What qualitative data collection methodology was used? Please elaborate.

The article is based on in-depth interviews with PLWHIV in order to understand the problems of people living with HIV/AIDS in Turkey in accessing health, education and ...