Conceptual and methodological challenges to measuring political commitment to respond to HIV.
Conceptual and methodological challenges to measuring political commitment to respond to HIV.
复制标题
DOI：
10.1186/1758-2652-14-s2-s5
复制
发表时间：
2011-09-27
影响因子：
6
通讯作者：
Bärnighausen T
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Fox AM;Goldberg AB;Gore RJ;Bärnighausen T
研究人员早就认识到中央政府的政治“承诺”对于有效应对艾滋病毒的重要性。然而，政治承诺的概念仍然定义不清，并且对于如何衡量这一概念及其与艾滋病毒相关结果的关系几乎没有给出指导。一些国家的艾滋病毒感染率有所下降，但在概念上难以将这些下降与政治承诺联系起来，而不是与根本的社会和行为因素联系起来。本文件首先对现有的关于将应对艾滋病毒的政治承诺概念化和衡量的努力以及政治承诺与艾滋病毒相关成果之间的联系的文献进行了严格审查。基于在这次审查中确定的要素，本文然后开发并提出了一个框架，以帮助研究人员作出选择，如何评估政府的政治承诺，以应对艾滋病毒的水平，以及如何将政治承诺与艾滋病毒相关的成果。对现有研究的审查确定了承诺的三个组成部分（口头承诺、体制承诺和预算承诺），作为可以衡量承诺的沿着不同方面。审查还确定了承诺的规范和意识形态方面，以及一系列需要加以考虑的介导和调节政治承诺的变量，以便对政治承诺与艾滋病毒相关成果之间的关系作出有效推断。该框架总结了研究人员可以遵循的一系列步骤，以评估政府对应对艾滋病毒的承诺程度，并提出了将该框架应用于国家案例的方法。虽然现有的研究已经通过了一个有限的，往往是模糊的概念的政治承诺，我们认为，设想的政治承诺沿着更多的尺寸将使研究人员绘制一个更完整的图片的政治承诺，以应对艾滋病毒，避免作出无效的推论之间的关系政治承诺和艾滋病毒的结果。
Researchers have long recognized the importance of a central government’s political “commitment” in order to mount an effective response to HIV. The concept of political commitment remains ill-defined, however, and little guidance has been given on how to measure this construct and its relationship with HIV-related outcomes. Several countries have experienced declines in HIV infection rates, but conceptual difficulties arise in linking these declines to political commitment as opposed to underlying social and behavioural factors. This paper first presents a critical review of the literature on existing efforts to conceptualize and measure political commitment to respond to HIV and the linkages between political commitment and HIV-related outcomes. Based on the elements identified in this review, the paper then develops and presents a framework to assist researchers in making choices about how to assess a government's level of political commitment to respond to HIV and how to link political commitment to HIV-related outcomes. The review of existing studies identifies three components of commitment (expressed, institutional and budgetary commitment) as different dimensions along which commitment can be measured. The review also identifies normative and ideological aspects of commitment and a set of variables that mediate and moderate political commitment that need to be accounted for in order to draw valid inferences about the relationship between political commitment and HIV-related outcomes. The framework summarizes a set of steps that researchers can follow in order to assess a government's level of commitment to respond to HIV and suggests ways to apply the framework to country cases. Whereas existing studies have adopted a limited and often ambiguous conception of political commitment, we argue that conceiving of political commitment along a greater number of dimensions will allow researchers to draw a more complete picture of political commitment to respond to HIV that avoids making invalid inferences about the relationship between political commitment and HIV outcomes.