ghanaopendata/ghanaian-research-english huggingface dataset:
Improving efficiency in utility companies: a case study of the Ghana Water Company

Since its establishment in 1965,the Ghana Water Company limited (GWCL) has been managed as a public utility and non-profit oriented institution and this has led to the situation where this strategic company is saddled with multiple constraints that have worked against efficiency in the delivery of its services to customers. The main objective of the study is to establish the main cause(s) of inefficiency in the management of water production and distribution by the GWCL and recommend strategies to improve its operational efficiency. Using the conventional questionnaires administration, interviews and physical observations, analysis of data collected from GWCL and corporate consumers revealed that 46.7% of actual water produced is considered as non-revenue water which the GWCL lost revenue of ¢886.60 billion. At 99.9% confidence level, significant difference exists between the volumes of actual water produced and actual water sold by GWCL, which shows that GWCL is inefficiently being operated and managed. Major constraints that adversely affect an efficient management of water production and distribution are increasing cost of production, lack of motivation and employee satisfaction, inadequate record of information on the operations of GWCL, poor quality service delivery, non payment of bills by consumers, consumers refusal and/or reluctance to pay economic price for service consumed and high cost of imported equipment and international expertise. To reduce cost of production GWCL should ensure effective monitoring of all functional activities and link reward of staff to performance. GWCL should introduce electronic data processing scheme to handle data generation, processing and storage. A good understanding of the customer should be identified and special attention be paid to quality service. Public education on the need to pay economic price and prompt payment of customer bills should be embarked on. The Water Resources Commission (WRC), Public utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC), and GWCL should develop guidelines to enhance water conservation and management practices, observe regular maintenance of the equipment and manage water as an economic good. Finally, it should ensure that all consumers are supplied with meters, make it easier for consumers to purchase and be responsible for their meters.

Source: KNUST
Improving customer satisfaction: the role of communication, a case study of Enterprise Life Assurance Company

The basic challenges of service companies today are how to effectively design and implement a ell structured communications platform in their efforts to satisfy customers. Many authorities argued that communication is essential part of service and can consequently create or destroy customer perceived value. Communication can be use as one of the most important tool in satisfying their customer. Generally, the study intended to find out the need for Enterprise Life Assurance Company to adopt effective communication strategies to satisfy and keep its clients in order to improve her position in the industry. Various literatures on the study were reviewed ranging from communication and customer satisfaction; communication techniques among others which the study tried to link it to the current study. Various methodological approaches were used that included sampling and research instrument. The sampling techniques included quota and purposive. The major instrument used was questionnaires. It was revealed that most of the customers had negative response to claims settlements whilst there was a good level of communication between ELAC and its customers. It was recommended that management should communicate regularly with their customers in order to assess the real effect of communication in improving customer satisfaction and make prompt payment on claims. Moreover, there should be more investment into the marketing of communications by companies so as to be above the competition in the industry.

Source: KNUST
Improving female students’ perception and performance in science and technology through role models and study tours: a case of Accra Technical Training Centre

The study presents assessment of performance re-orientation and short-term project to effect a change in the perception and performance of the female technology students of Accra Technical Training Centre (ATTC). The study is an action research aimed at helping to correct the negative perceptions held by female students about science and technology and to improve their performance at ATTC. The purpose of the study was intended to find out the baseline situation of the perception and performance in science and technology subjects of female students at ATTC in order to effect an intervention to improve on the situation. Purposive sampling was used to select the entire first and the second year female students who were 25 in number. The duration for the study was six weeks, thus, first week for pre-intervention, second to fifth week for intervention and the last week for post-intervention. The data collection instrument for the study for both the pre-intervention and the post-intervention was a combination of questionnaire to analyse the perceptions of the respondents and a structured performance test to analyse their performance in the areas of the science and technology courses offered at ATTC. The same instrument was used at the pre-intervention stage as well as post-intervention stage. Simple percentages were used to analyse the perceptions of the female students’ data whilst mean score and t-test were used to analyse the performance of the students. The main findings of this study were that performance re-orientation and short-term project have greater influence in improving the perception and performance of the female students in science and technology. In view of this it was recommended that, there is the need to include interaction with successful female technologists in the training curricula.

Source: KNUST
Improving family planning utilization in the Agona District

Ghana adopted a population policy aimed at reducing the rate of growth of the population from 3.0% in 1970 to 1.7% by the year 2000. However, thirty years after adopting the policy, there have been no signs that the target has been achieved. Agona district has an estimated population of 172,724 according to the 2000 population census figures released in 2002 with an annual growth rate of 2.55% The District Health Management Team (DHMT) has identified low utilization of family planning as a matter of urgency, because even though the annual growth rate is lower than the national figure of 3.1% it is higher than the Regional average figure of 1.8% and an average 18% teenage pregnancy trend since 2002. This had had very serious multiplying effects on health and other socio- economic conditions. A descriptive cross sectional study was undertaken to evaluate the current level of utilization; assess the factors for the trend and recommend strategies for policy update. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected for analysis. A multistage sampling technique was used to select 200 respondents for the study while purposive sampling was used to collect data from focal persons at the family planning clinics. The results of the study showed that the sub districts were not empowered enough to provide all methods. People tend to listen to friends more than technical advice from care providers. Religion and culture did not affect family planning utilization negatively Lack of knowledge resulting in rumoured side effects associated with family planning was a serious concern. The study therefore recommended that mass education campaign should be undertaken through collaborative efforts of the health, information and education sectors since majority of the respondents said enough education on the on the effective, possible side effects of the various FP methods will allay their fears and thereby increase utilization. Mobile family planning programme should be focused because most of the respondents asked if we were ready to provide them with the FP services. Sub district should also be empowered to provide all FP methods

Source: KNUST
Improving Ghana’s voting system by the use of paper dispenser system.

General Elections grant the populace the opportunity to select their president and parliamentarians and also to express their rights in how they should be governed in general. In the recent past 2012 General election organized by the Electoral commission of Ghana (EC), there was an introduction of Biometric System which was associated with the electoral processes. It was the first of its kind ever since the introduction of democracy in Ghana. The biometric process is not just the biometric registrations of voters but also the biometric verification to ensure voter authentication and to prevent voters from multiple voting. Although the biometric system improved the voting system in Ghana, there were a lot of problems that also came up which could have disturb the peace of the nation. The 2012 general election suffered problems of multiple voting and voting without verification which was the main problem to be solved by the biometric system. This however, resulted in the matter of a petition challenging the validity of the election of John Dramani Mahama as president of Ghana. With a critical analysis and observation, the problems that came about were from the fact that ballot papers were manually issued by the electoral officials after verification. That means, voter can get or be issue a ballot paper to cast his/her vote even if he/she has not gone through the laid down procedures. This thesis propose a design and implementation of paper dispenser system, which will secure all the ballot papers and only issued out a ballot paper if the voter has gone through laid down processes for the election. The paper dispenser system take it command or input from a biometric verification device which is rapidly processed for authentication and verification before issuing out ballot paper to voter to vote. Again the paper dispenser system output or result can be used to check for multiple voting and ballot papers that were sneaked into the ballot boxes by voters

Source: KNUST
Improving Ghana’s export performance (a case of the processed foods sector)

This thesis is a study of the non-traditional sector of Ghana with emphasis on processed and semi-processed foods. It is aimed at unraveling the economic potential of the total development of Ghana’s economy. The work examines how entrepreneurs can add value to raw agricultural produce such as cassava ( to obtain cassava flour ‘kokonte’, cassava dough, etc.) maize ( to obtain corn flour, roasted corn, corn dough, etc.) and other varieties such as wean mix to make them more acceptable to foreign markets and make them less perishable which eventually gives them better prices than the raw agricultural produce.

Source: KNUST
Improving network security by sanitizing network topological information to encapsulate particular network topology

Securing data is crucial in a world where attackers will attempt to gain access to personal and business information that, for privacy reasons, we want to protect. Information on a network topology can be used by an adversary to undermine a network. To preserve this information, access to the data can be restricted. What if, however, we want to share the information with another party to allow analysis on the data? How can we ensure that the privacy of our data is protected while still providing accurate analysis? Summarizing the information of network topology may not allow for any analysis to be performed on the data. Sanitization, on the other hand, explores methods to mask the network topology information in such a way that the network’s characteristics will be hiding while still providing an analyst with data on which she can run statistics. There exists a tenuous balance between the need for privacy of the unsanitized network data and the accuracy of the analysis on the sanitized data. The goal is to effectively hide the raw data while the analysis on the sanitized data produces the same results as if performed on the raw data. By exploring the network characteristics, we can determine possible statistics that may derive from the data. We proposed a standard syntax for defining a network. From the syntax and the topology characteristics, sanitization schemes are detailed explaining the balance between privacy and statistical accuracy. IP addressing ramifications and the concerns when sanitizing are also identified.

Source: KNUST
Improving male involvement in family planning in Nkwanta District of Ghana: a transtheoretical approach

Various studies have shown that family planning adoption is likely to be more effective for women when men are actively involved. Male involvement in family planning is an instance of behaviour change. The Transtheoretical model of behaviour change was used to examine men’s involvement in general contraception. The study objectives included testing the reliability of the transtheoretical model constructs, examining the relationship between the constructs as well as socio-demographic variables and the stages of change. The study was an analytical cross-sectional study with a representative sample of 226 men aged between 18 and 55. A multistage sampling involving simple random, systematic and purposive sampling was employed. A staging algorithm to determine the stages of change identified five stages in men’s preparedness to encourage their wives to use contraception. These were the maintenance action, preparation, contemplation and precontemplation stages. Reliable scales were developed and used to test the decisional balance and self-efficacy constructs. All the three scales developed had high cronbach’s alpha values indicating good internal consistency (pros for contraception .9283; cons for contraception .8 150; and self-efficacy .9333). Statistical tests to examine the relationship between stages of change and the transtheoretical model constructs showed that stage was related to both decisional balance (pros and cons of contraception) [F(4,22 1 )=4.329 ;P=.0021 [F(4,22 1 )= 14.182 P=.000 and self efficacy {F(4,221)=1 1.61 1;P=.000]. Residence was found to be related to stage but other socio-demographic variables were not related to stage. The relationship between the TM constructs and the stages were as predicted by the model. Pros increased with stage and the reverse was the case for cons. The scores on the self-efficacy scale also increased with stage. It was noted that 67% of the sample across stages shared similar characteristics. This group represents the maintenance, action, preparation, and contemplation stages of change. Only the group in the precontemplation stage was statistically different. This suggests that the first four stages are equally amendable to contraception. The findings suggests that an effective way of increasing family planning will be to use stage based information to decrease the disadvantages of contraception and increase the advantages of FP and self-efficacy. The Ghana Health service, Nkwanta district health management team and community health officers as well as non-governmental organizations must seek to administer staged based information to clients at the community level by stressing the advantages of contraception to clients in the lower stages while emphasizing self-efficacy to those in the higher stages. Rumors about the disadvantages of contraception must be dispelled and prompt treatment provided for those who experience bad side effects.

Source: KNUST
Improving on the landscape of Manhyia Palace to enhance tourists’ attraction

Tourism is one of the fastest growing industries in the world and Ghana has embraced it to earn the much needed foreign exchange to improve her economy. All the regions in the country are actively exploiting their potential to attract tourists and the Ashanti Region, known for its rich history and cultural tradition, is trying to forge the way ahead in this respect. The region has a number of tourists’ attraction sites and this includes the Manhyia Palace (one of the region’s cultural heritages), which attracts the greatest number of tourists to the region but has not got much to show to these visitors. There is the need, therefore, for Manhyia Palace to keep up the pace by being proactive in giving its best in the industry to the region. This could be better achieved through implementation of this proposed meaningful landscape design which sets out to highlight the Palace’s assets and also creates new developments to augment its attraction. The projected landscape design sets out to use mosaic vegetation and cultural artifacts to improve a) on the landscape environment of the Palace, b) distinguish it from other public functional zones in the Metropolis and c) to create an aura of mystic around the Palace. The proposed design could be used by the Manhyia Palace Administration to draw more of both domestic and foreign visitors to the Palace.

Source: KNUST
Improving Password Authentication In Web Application With A Hybrid Authentication Technique

Text based password authentication is still by far the most dominant method of user authentication in most web applications notwithstanding its perceived vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities usually emanate from users choosing short and weak passwords and also compliance with some security policies which mostly required clients to create complex passwords with the goal of safeguarding their web application accounts. Remembering such passwords seems very difficult for some users which could lead to unreliable practices, such as writing down the password on a piece of paper or diary or selecting weakened passwords. On the contrary, the graphical password technique provides a better “ease of recall” and is usually deemed as an alternative to the traditional passwords technique though it also has some security concerns such as shoulder surfing and password guessing. However, One Time Password (OTP) tends to defeat the abovementioned vulnerabilities of both the text and graphical password techniques. This research tends to propose a hybrid authentication technique which combines PassFace and PassPoint graphical algorithms and Time-Based One-Time Password to provide an improved security and usability of the first level Text-based password. The security offered by this hybrid technique was evaluated by measuring the theoretical security entropy and password space. To evaluate the usability of the system, an experiment was carried out in three different sessions to assess the ease of signing up, ease of authentication and memorability of the technique. The outcome revealed that users could easily create accounts and login easily over time. The research further simulated two most common form of graphical authentication threats (shoulder-surfing and guessing). Some of the participants were tasked to act as assailants in an attempt to hack into the application. The hybrid authentication technique showed a higher resilience against the threats, as all attempts to compromise the system failed.

Source: KNUST
Improving Network Security Using Key-Stroke Dynamics: A Case Study at Anglican Senior High School

System administrators and safety professionals know that relying on only “userID” and “user Password” to validate users is basically not virtually efficient, particularly where system safety is at stake. A procedure known as keystroke dynamics (or, typing dynamics) is rising as an helpful way to fortify user certification. Keystroke dynamics is a thorough explanation of the timing of key-down and key-up proceedings when users enter usernames, passwords, or any other cord of lettering. Because a user's keystroke timings are as individual as handwriting or a autograph, keystroke dynamics can be used as part of a proposal to confirm a user's uniqueness. That is the idea after keystroke dynamics. Some researchers and developers have built many techniques more or less using this keystroke dynamics biometric as a form of validation to Web-based applications, e-mail and networks. This research project seeks to provide improved technique over the works of these researchers and developers, providing second layer of security to user’s identity authentication and verification process, using keystroke dynamics on the user’s computer rather than inculcating in network server authentication process. A resultant software application from this research project is named “BioNetLogon” developed in VB.Net environment. It comes with interfaces that authenticate users (against database of users keystroke patterns) after windows logon stage, whilst controlling the user’s computer network services to ensure that only successful authenticated user gets access to the Windows desktop as well as network resources of his/her computer. Otherwise, the user is blocked from getting access to the network environment with the network services disabled.

Source: KNUST
Improving operational effectiveness and efficiency through sound inventory management practices : (A Case Study of Tractor and Equipment Ghana Ltd.)

The Inventory Control System in tractor and equipment Ghana Ltd (T&E) has been based on the DCES (Dealer Channel Entry system) which is a must for all caterpillar dealership. In recent years the Kumasi branch has been found to register huge stock variances during stock checks and measures were introduced from time to time to reduce the variances. The study seeks to assess the Inventory Control System in place and the effect of measures implemented The emergence of “gray” dealers and the ability of customers to have direct off-shore dealings, whereby they are able to order parts direct from companies abroad have made competition very fierce T&E therefore needs to strengthen its position to continue to maintain customer loyalty It is always expedient to ensure customer satisfaction, through the dissemination of accurate information especially on inventory Failure to do so could encourage customers to seek other sources of satisfaction, which will lead to low turnover for T&E. Semi structured questionnaires and interviews were conducted in this research and primary data was collected. Secondary, data was also used in the research. The study revealed that, low commitment to inventory control measures and data entry errors contributed partly to the inventory control problems, but the major source of the problem resulted from pilfering or theft in the stores.

Source: KNUST