Reflecting on South African psychology: published research, ‘relevance’ and social issues

As South Africa prepared to host the 30th International Congress of Psychology in 2012, a call was made to reflect on the strengths of and challenges facing contemporary South African Psychology. This paper presents our response to our brief to focus on social issues by presenting the results of a situational analysis of South African Psychology over the last five years and comparing this corpus of data to a similar analysis reported in Macleod (2004). Articles appearing in the South African Journal of Psychology (SAJP) and abstracts in PsycINFO with the keyword ‘South Africa’ over a 5½ year period were analysed. The content of 243 SAJP articles and 1986 PsycINFO abstracts were analysed using the codes developed by Macleod (2004). Results indicate: an increase in the number of articles, a reduction in the percentage of articles using quantitative methodologies and ‘hard’ science theoretical frameworks (particularly in the SAJP), and an increase in qualitative, theoretical, and methodological papers, and papers using systems-oriented theory (particularly in the SAJP). Traditional topics of assessment, stress and psychopathology continue to dominate, with social issues such as housing, land reform, development programmes, water resources and socio-economic inequities being largely ignored. Most research continues to be conducted in Gauteng, KwaZulu/Natal and the Western Cape, predominantly with adult, urban-based, middle-class participants, sourced mainly from universities, hospitals or clinics and schools. Collaborations or comparisons with other African, Asian, South American and Middle East countries have decreased. While the analysis presented in this paper is limited by its exclusion of books, theses, research reports and monographs, it shows that in published research there are some positive trends and some disappointments. The limited number of social issues featuring in published research, the under-representation of certain sectors of the population as participants, and the decrease in collaboration with, or comparison to, countries from the global ‘South’ represent challenges that require systematic attention