Sumaya Laher
Biographic Data
| ID | 4233603 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sumaya Laher |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sumaya |
| FAMILY NAME | Laher |
| SIGNATURE | LAHER S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Witwatersrand |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1298-0769 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 22 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Mental health of young adults in South Africa
Around 70% of Africa’s population is under 30, yet many young people face challenges which contribute to psychological distress. Studies have shown gender, financial status, and religiosity can serve as both risk and protective factors depending on the biological, psychological, social, and spiritual factors young adults are exposed to. However, research in the area tends to focus primarily on adolescence. This study investigated the presence of …
Behind the scenes of scholarly success
From scope to scale
Using AI in academic writing
Personality trait change in three sub-Saharan countries
Over the last 20 years, personality development has become one of the most widely studied topics in personality science. However, evidence on normative and event-related personality development stems almost exclusively from Western countries, providing limited insight into the cross-cultural generalizability of personality trait changes. To address this limitation, we used data from the Africa Long Life Study to examine personality development in…
Advancing an agenda for psychological assessment in South Africa
Psychological assessment has always been a core part of psychology, but like all other subdisciplines, the applicability of psychological assessments has always been debated. Typically, assessments are developed in the Global North and used in countries across the globe. The universalist assumption and the theories that underpin these assessments has in the last 30 years been challenged. There is an increasing recognition that experiences differ …
Loadshedding, safety concerns, and mental health in South Africa
Persistent power cuts, known as loadshedding, have become a disruptive fixture in South African daily life, affecting routines and economic stability. In this commentary, we argue that much attention has been given to the economic impact and political ramifications linked to loadshedding, but its psychological toll on the population has been largely overlooked. Access to electricity must be regarded as a basic human right as it is closely linked …
In the Wake of Covid-19
Multiple studies have noted the impacts on student mental health of the COVID-19 pandemic, associated national lockdowns and emergency remote teaching. In light of COVID-19 shifting from pandemic to endemic status, this study investigates the developmental and mental health consequences of the pandemic for a group of South African undergraduate students. A qualitative design allowed for the thematic analysis of the narratives of 140 humanities st…
International Histories of Psychological Assessment
To look forward, it is necessary to look back and learn. History is more than just facts about the past; it is a narrative told from a particular perspective. A proverb from Africa, 'Until lions have their own historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter,' captures this best. Most of the scholarship about psychological assessment comes from very specific nationalities and cultures, which does not truly reflect the diversity and b…
Undergraduate psychology student experiences during Covid-19
National strategies to manage COVID-19, including lockdown, have caused significant disruption to student learning and to the ways that students engage with staff and peers. The transition to online learning, alongside common anxieties associated with the disease itself, was likely to have affected student mental health. This study explored psychology student mental health experiences during Lockdown Phase 3 at the University of the Witwatersrand…
International Histories of Psychological Assessment
Doing systematic reviews in Psychology
Systematic reviews by virtue of being a pre-determined, transparent, and comprehensive plan and search strategy are fast gaining popularity in psychology in South Africa. A systematic review allows one to obtain a thorough overview regarding the recent developments and debates on a given topic with the addition of metacommentary. In South Africa, we have noted stark differences in the reporting of systematic reviews. Often studies are identified …
Transforming Research Methods in the Social Sciences
Social science researchers in the global South, and in South Africa particularly, utilise research methods in innovative ways in order to respond to contexts characterised by diversity, racial and political tensions, socioeconomic disparities and gender inequalities. These methods often remain undocumented ? a gap that this book starts to address. Written by experts from various methodological fields, Transforming Research Methods in the Social S…
Transforming Research Methods in the Social Sciences
An exploration of understandings of major depressive disorder in a South African Indian Muslim female community
Depression is a serious mental illness that has severe socio-economic costs. Studying the impact of various cultural beliefs on the understandings of depression is imperative as findings could assist with developing effective intervention strategies. This research aimed to explore the understandings South African Muslim females have of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) with a focus on cultural and religious factors that may underlie these understan…
When There Are Only Minorities
Intergroup relation perspectives stem from research in Western contexts with clear distinctions between the dominant and nondominant groups. In South Africa, with at least 13 different cultural groups and 11 official languages, no group is dominant in all life spheres. We examine the relationship between identity and in-/out-group orientation across Black-Zulu, Coloured (mixed racial ancestry), Indian, and White-Afrikaans emerging adults ( N = 39…
Rethinking public mental health care
Personality and behavior prediction and consistency across cultures
The cross-cultural universality of behavior's consistency and predictability from personality, assumed in trait models though challenged in cultural psychological models, has usually been operationalized in terms of beliefs and perceptions, and assessed using single-instance self-reports. In a multimethod study of actual behavior across a range of situations, we examined predictability and consistency in participants from the more collectivistic …
Ostinato rigore
The last 20 years in South Africa and abroad have evidenced huge changes in the ways in which research is accessed and produced. These changes were facilitated by the rapid developments in technology. Collaborating with researchers across the globe and accessing articles and research can be done at the push of a button and response times are as instantaneous. Conducting and communicating one’s own research are also much easier. This led to a veri…
Perceptions of the utility of personality assessment for personnel selection in the South African context
This study explored South African industrial psychologists’ perceptions of the utility of personality assessment for personnel selection. Eleven industrial psychologists (2 male, 9 female) from the Johannesburg area, South Africa were the participants. They participated in semi-structured interviews exploring their understanding of the place of personality assessment in personnel selection within organisational settings in South Africa and the co…
South African Hindu Psychologists’ Perceptions of Mental Illness
Beyond Agreeableness
An overview of illness conceptualizations in African, Hindu, and Islamic traditions
Increasingly, research, teaching, and practice emphasize the need for cultural competency among healthcare practitioners. Most training programmes include modules on cultural competency based on a knowledge, skills, and awareness model. In line with the knowledge and awareness objectives of cultural competency, this article focuses on the conceptualization of illness from an Islamic, Hindu, and African perspective. It discusses spiritual illness,…
Psychological assessment in post-apartheid South Africa
In 2014, South Africa is into its 20th year since the 1994 elections which ushered in a democratic government and marked the official end of apartheid. The discipline of Psychology has in this time attained many milestones, several of which relate to the sub-discipline of psychological assessment. Prior to, during, and post-apartheid, psychological assessment featured as one of the most contentious areas in the history of the country, as well as …
Understanding the Five-Factor Model and Five-Factor Theory through a South African cultural lens
Despite the vast body of evidence accumulated for the Five-Factor Model worldwide, it is often criticised for being atheoretical, too descriptive, and lacking reference to personality development across the lifespan. In response to these critiques, McCrae and Costa proposed the Five-Factor Theory. This article introduces the reader briefly to the Five-Factor Model and Five-Factor Theory. The Five-Factor Theory refers to the five factors of the Fi…
Psychological assessment in post-apartheid South Africa
In 2014, South Africa is into its 20th year since the 1994 elections which ushered in a democratic government and marked the official end of apartheid. The discipline of Psychology has in this time attained many milestones, several of which relate to the sub-discipline of psychological assessment. Prior to, during, and post-apartheid, psychological assessment featured as one of the most contentious areas in the history of the country, as well as …
Ostinato rigore
The last 20 years in South Africa and abroad have evidenced huge changes in the ways in which research is accessed and produced. These changes were facilitated by the rapid developments in technology. Collaborating with researchers across the globe and accessing articles and research can be done at the push of a button and response times are as instantaneous. Conducting and communicating one’s own research are also much easier. This led to a veri…
Undergraduate psychology student experiences during Covid-19
National strategies to manage COVID-19, including lockdown, have caused significant disruption to student learning and to the ways that students engage with staff and peers. The transition to online learning, alongside common anxieties associated with the disease itself, was likely to have affected student mental health. This study explored psychology student mental health experiences during Lockdown Phase 3 at the University of the Witwatersrand…
Personality and behavior prediction and consistency across cultures
The cross-cultural universality of behavior's consistency and predictability from personality, assumed in trait models though challenged in cultural psychological models, has usually been operationalized in terms of beliefs and perceptions, and assessed using single-instance self-reports. In a multimethod study of actual behavior across a range of situations, we examined predictability and consistency in participants from the more collectivistic …
An overview of illness conceptualizations in African, Hindu, and Islamic traditions
Increasingly, research, teaching, and practice emphasize the need for cultural competency among healthcare practitioners. Most training programmes include modules on cultural competency based on a knowledge, skills, and awareness model. In line with the knowledge and awareness objectives of cultural competency, this article focuses on the conceptualization of illness from an Islamic, Hindu, and African perspective. It discusses spiritual illness,…
Teaching Research and Statistics at Undergraduate Level
Students enter university with huge variances in terms of research and mathematical background, resulting in difficulty in levels at which a research and statistics module can be taught. This is further compounded by the fact that most students registering for the psychology course in research design and analysis (RDA) at the University of the Witwatersrand have little or no mathematical background and quite often experience a high level of anxie…
Advancing an agenda for psychological assessment in South Africa
Psychological assessment has always been a core part of psychology, but like all other subdisciplines, the applicability of psychological assessments has always been debated. Typically, assessments are developed in the Global North and used in countries across the globe. The universalist assumption and the theories that underpin these assessments has in the last 30 years been challenged. There is an increasing recognition that experiences differ …
Loadshedding, safety concerns, and mental health in South Africa
Persistent power cuts, known as loadshedding, have become a disruptive fixture in South African daily life, affecting routines and economic stability. In this commentary, we argue that much attention has been given to the economic impact and political ramifications linked to loadshedding, but its psychological toll on the population has been largely overlooked. Access to electricity must be regarded as a basic human right as it is closely linked …
Rethinking public mental health care
Beyond Agreeableness
Understanding the Five-Factor Model and Five-Factor Theory through a South African cultural lens
Despite the vast body of evidence accumulated for the Five-Factor Model worldwide, it is often criticised for being atheoretical, too descriptive, and lacking reference to personality development across the lifespan. In response to these critiques, McCrae and Costa proposed the Five-Factor Theory. This article introduces the reader briefly to the Five-Factor Model and Five-Factor Theory. The Five-Factor Theory refers to the five factors of the Fi…
Reflections on Teaching Undergraduate Psychology to Part-Time Adult Students
Teaching the part-time adult student provides numerous challenges not encountered in full-time undergraduate teaching. This short report presents these differing characteristics and the steps taken to cater for them in the Discipline of Psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand using an autoethnographic approach (Ellis & Bochner, 2003). These reflections are discussed within the context of andragogy (Knowles, 1980), transformative learnin…
Personality Reconceptualised
The field of personality theory and assessment is often criticised for two reasons. The first is the lack of an integrated theory of personality that considers the intrapsychic, interpersonal, environmental, and biological aspects involved in personality development. The second is the Eurocentric nature of most theories. This article critically explores Millon's model of personality as a possible stepping stone towards a more holistic and integra…
Reflections on Teaching Undergraduate Psychology to Part-Time Adult Students
Teaching the part-time adult student provides numerous challenges not encountered in full-time undergraduate teaching. This short report presents these differing characteristics and the steps taken to cater for them in the Discipline of Psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand using an autoethnographic approach (Ellis & Bochner, 2003). These reflections are discussed within the context of andragogy (Knowles, 1980), transformative learnin…
The Relationship between Religious Orientation and Pressure in Psychology I Students at the University of the Witwatersrand
This study considers the relationship between religious orientation and pressure in 494 first-year Psychology students at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Religious orientation is defined according to Allport's concepts of intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation and was measured using the Allport-Ross Religious Orientation Scale-Revised. Pressure is a concept used by Weiten to define the everyday life stress experienced by…
Personality Reconceptualised
The field of personality theory and assessment is often criticised for two reasons. The first is the lack of an integrated theory of personality that considers the intrapsychic, interpersonal, environmental, and biological aspects involved in personality development. The second is the Eurocentric nature of most theories. This article critically explores Millon's model of personality as a possible stepping stone towards a more holistic and integra…
Teaching Research and Statistics at Undergraduate Level
Students enter university with huge variances in terms of research and mathematical background, resulting in difficulty in levels at which a research and statistics module can be taught. This is further compounded by the fact that most students registering for the psychology course in research design and analysis (RDA) at the University of the Witwatersrand have little or no mathematical background and quite often experience a high level of anxie…
Innovation in Teaching Undergraduate Psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand
In this collection of short reports — the first such collection to be published in the South African Journal of Psychology — we introduce a range of innovations in the teaching of undergraduate psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand. Following as it does on the recent Teaching of Psychology in South Africa conference, we hope that this collection will help to maintain the renewed interest in and enthusiasm for undergraduate teaching in…
South African Muslim Faith Healers Perceptions of Mental Illness
The Islamic Careline Ladies Lifeskills Program
The Islamic Careline established a Ladies Lifeskills program in response to a shared view by clients, volunteers and management at the Careline that females within the community were experiencing feelings of disempowerment and low self esteem. In practice, the program consisted of a series of ten sessions, aimed at empowering women by building self-worth and improving their quality of life via the transmission of knowledge on core life skills. Th…
Exploring the Reliability and Validity of the DAT-K in Grade 11 Learners in a Historically Disadvantaged School in Johannesburg, South Africa
This study explored the reliability and validity of the Differential Aptitude Test—Form K (DAT-K) in a sample of 75 learners (mean age = 17.1 years, SD = 1.13) from a previously disadvantaged school in Johannesburg. Adequate reliability coefficients were obtained but coefficients were higher for nonverbal than verbal subtests. Face validity was judged to be adequate but construct validity was questionable. All subtests correlated within cluster (…
Exploring the Role of Spirituality in the Context of the Five Factor Model of Personality in a South African Sample
The study explored the relationship between the Five Factor Model of personality and spirituality by using the NEO PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and the Spiritual Transcendence Scale (STS) (Piedmont, 1999) respectively. Participants were 94 psychology undergraduate students at a large South African university (mean age = 19.1 years; SD =1.43, males =19, females=75). Data were analyzed using both correlations as well as principal components analysis…
Personality Styles of Patients with Bipolar Disorder
The relationship that exists between personality and bipolar disorder (BD) is a complex one with numerous published studies yielding conflicting results. Thus we intended to ascertain whether a relationship exists between personality and bipolar disorder in a South African sample of 23 bipolar individuals. The MCMI-III was used to confirm the diagnosis of BD and to measure personality styles. A significant relationship between bipolar disorder an…
The Influence of Mode of Test Administration on Test Performance
This study examined the influence of mode of test administration (paper based or computer-based) on anxiety levels and test performance. Participants were 44 learners (males = 22, females = 22) from three schools in Johannesburg, South Africa who completed both a computer and paper version of the Differential Aptitude Test—Form K Non-Verbal Reasoning test, the Computer Attitude Scale, the Computer Anxiety Rating Scale and Sarason's Test Anxiety S…
Exploring the Influence of Islam on the Perceptions of Mental Illness of Volunteers in a Johannesburg Community-based Organisation
Current understandings of mental illness are rooted in Western paradigms and fail to incorporate indigenous understandings. Swartz (2002) argues that the way certain conditions are labelled in different settings and how they are expressed in different cultures, need to be taken into consideration. Thus, this study explores the perceptions of mental illness in a sample of eight volunteer counsellors at a community-based organisation in Johannesbur…
South African Muslim Psychologists' Perceptions of Mental Illness
This study explored perceptions of mental illness in a sample of 10 female Muslim psychologists in a South African city to determine the influences of religion (and Islam specifically) on their understanding of the aetiology and treatment of mental illness. Participants responded to a semi-structured interview. The data from the interviews were thematically analyzed. Four themes emerged from the analysis: mental illness as maladaptive coping, rel…
Understanding the Five-Factor Model and Five-Factor Theory through a South African cultural lens
Despite the vast body of evidence accumulated for the Five-Factor Model worldwide, it is often criticised for being atheoretical, too descriptive, and lacking reference to personality development across the lifespan. In response to these critiques, McCrae and Costa proposed the Five-Factor Theory. This article introduces the reader briefly to the Five-Factor Model and Five-Factor Theory. The Five-Factor Theory refers to the five factors of the Fi…
South African Hindu Psychologists’ Perceptions of Mental Illness
Beyond Agreeableness
An overview of illness conceptualizations in African, Hindu, and Islamic traditions
Increasingly, research, teaching, and practice emphasize the need for cultural competency among healthcare practitioners. Most training programmes include modules on cultural competency based on a knowledge, skills, and awareness model. In line with the knowledge and awareness objectives of cultural competency, this article focuses on the conceptualization of illness from an Islamic, Hindu, and African perspective. It discusses spiritual illness,…
Psychological assessment in post-apartheid South Africa
In 2014, South Africa is into its 20th year since the 1994 elections which ushered in a democratic government and marked the official end of apartheid. The discipline of Psychology has in this time attained many milestones, several of which relate to the sub-discipline of psychological assessment. Prior to, during, and post-apartheid, psychological assessment featured as one of the most contentious areas in the history of the country, as well as …
Perceptions of the utility of personality assessment for personnel selection in the South African context
This study explored South African industrial psychologists’ perceptions of the utility of personality assessment for personnel selection. Eleven industrial psychologists (2 male, 9 female) from the Johannesburg area, South Africa were the participants. They participated in semi-structured interviews exploring their understanding of the place of personality assessment in personnel selection within organisational settings in South Africa and the co…
Ostinato rigore
The last 20 years in South Africa and abroad have evidenced huge changes in the ways in which research is accessed and produced. These changes were facilitated by the rapid developments in technology. Collaborating with researchers across the globe and accessing articles and research can be done at the push of a button and response times are as instantaneous. Conducting and communicating one’s own research are also much easier. This led to a veri…
Personality and behavior prediction and consistency across cultures
The cross-cultural universality of behavior's consistency and predictability from personality, assumed in trait models though challenged in cultural psychological models, has usually been operationalized in terms of beliefs and perceptions, and assessed using single-instance self-reports. In a multimethod study of actual behavior across a range of situations, we examined predictability and consistency in participants from the more collectivistic …
An exploration of understandings of major depressive disorder in a South African Indian Muslim female community
Depression is a serious mental illness that has severe socio-economic costs. Studying the impact of various cultural beliefs on the understandings of depression is imperative as findings could assist with developing effective intervention strategies. This research aimed to explore the understandings South African Muslim females have of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) with a focus on cultural and religious factors that may underlie these understan…
When There Are Only Minorities
Intergroup relation perspectives stem from research in Western contexts with clear distinctions between the dominant and nondominant groups. In South Africa, with at least 13 different cultural groups and 11 official languages, no group is dominant in all life spheres. We examine the relationship between identity and in-/out-group orientation across Black-Zulu, Coloured (mixed racial ancestry), Indian, and White-Afrikaans emerging adults ( N = 39…
Rethinking public mental health care
Transforming Research Methods in the Social Sciences
Social science researchers in the global South, and in South Africa particularly, utilise research methods in innovative ways in order to respond to contexts characterised by diversity, racial and political tensions, socioeconomic disparities and gender inequalities. These methods often remain undocumented ? a gap that this book starts to address. Written by experts from various methodological fields, Transforming Research Methods in the Social S…
Psychology (33 works) · Social Psychology (21 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Political science (11 works) · Mental health (10 works) · Psychiatry (10 works) · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology (9 works) · Social science (9 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (8 works) · Developmental psychology (8 works)