explosion of research related to such central topics as aggression, attraction, gender,

group processes, motivation, personality, and persuasion, to name a few. The

proliferation of research can be a monster unless it is tamed with the scientific

review strategy of meta-analysis, literally analyses of past analyses that produce

a quantitative and empirical history of research on a particular phenomenon. The

purpose of this article is to outline the basic process and statistics of meta-analysis,

as they pertain to social-personality psychology. Meta-analysis involves: (i) defining

the problem under review; (ii) gathering qualified reports and putting their

findings and methods into a database, (iii) analyzing that database, and (iv)

interpreting the results and reporting them. Use of meta-analytic strategies has

paralleled the knowledge explosion in social-personality psychology, but must be

used and consumed with careful discernment if the cumulated evidence about

the social animal, Homo sapiens , is to have maximal value.

Methods: For 42-days daily phone interviews assessed daily sexual behaviour and alcohol consumption. Logistic and Poisson GEE models were used to examine associations between alcohol consumption before sex and subsequent unprotected sex.

Results: During the study which yielded 3,035 data points, the 58 HIV+ women and 24 HIV+ men drank an average of 6.13 drinks when they drank, and reported 4,927 sex events, of which 80.17% were unprotected. Over half (58%) of unprotected sex events were with HIV-negative or HIV-status-unknown partners. Extrapolating from the data using likelihood of infection per act estimates we calculated that an estimated 2.95 incident HIV-infections occurred during the study. Drinking alcohol before sex by the female, the male, or by both partners, increased the proportion and number of subsequent unprotected sex events. However, these associations held only when the quantity of alcohol consumed corresponded to moderate or higher risk drinking.

Conclusions: Among HIV-positives engaging in moderate or higher risk drinking prior to sex increases the likelihood and rate of unprotected sex. Prevention efforts need to address reducing alcohol-involved unprotected sex among HIV-positive persons.

Design: Cross-sectional survey of 152 HIV+ individuals attending a hospital-based HIV-clinic.

Methods: Structured interviews were conducted by bilingual interviewers. Sexual risk behaviour in the preceding 3 months was assessed via event counts.

Results: In one of the first studies of its kind in South Africa we found that nearly half of the sample reported vaginal or anal sex during the preceding 3 months, and 30% of these patients reported unprotected vaginal or anal sex. Among sexually active patients, a total of 171 unprotected sex events were reported, 40% of which were with partners perceived to be HIV negative or HIV-status unknown. Nine such partners were potentially exposed to HIV. Alcohol use during sex, being forced to have sex, sex with a perceived HIV+ partner, and sex with a casual partner predicted more unprotected sex, whereas HIV-status disclosure was related to less unprotected sex.

Conclusions: HIV+ individuals in clinical care in South Africa may engage in unprotected sex that place others at risk of HIV infection and themselves at risk for infection with STIs. With a national ARV rollout currently underway in South Africa, increasing numbers of HIV+ individuals are entering care. This affords a crucial opportunity to link HIV prevention with HIV care, an approach that aims to reduce transmission risk behaviour among HIV+ individuals and is consistent with international agencies’ current prevention priorities.

Method. Studies examining health domains related to the leading health indicators outlined in Healthy People 2010 were selected. Data from 75 randomized controlled trials, published between 1988 and 2007, with 35,685 participants and 82 separate interventions were included. All studies were coded independently by two raters for study and participant characteristics, design and methodology, and intervention content. We calculated weighted mean effect sizes for theoretically-meaningful psychosocial and behavioral outcomes; moderator analyses determined the relation between study characteristics and the magnitude of effect sizes for heterogeneous outcomes.

Results. Compared with controls, participants who received a computer-delivered intervention improved several hypothesized antecedents of health behavior (knowledge, attitudes, and intentions); intervention recipients also improved several health behaviors (nutrition, tobacco use, substance use, safer sexual behavior, binge/purge behaviors) and general health maintenance. Several sample, study and intervention characteristics moderated the psychosocial and behavioral outcomes.

Conclusion. Computer-delivered interventions can lead to improved behavioral health outcomes at first post-intervention assessment. Interventions evaluating outcomes at extended assessment periods are needed to evaluate the long-lasting efficacy of computer-delivered interventions.