ghanaopendata/ghanaian-research-english huggingface dataset:
How Evidence-Based Is an ‘Evidence-Based Parenting Program’? A PRISMA Systematic Review and Meta Analysis of Triple P

Interventions to promote positive parenting are often reported to offer good outcomes for children but they can consume substantial resources and they require rigorous appraisal. Methods: Evaluations of the Triple P parenting program were subjected to systematic review and meta-analysis with analysis of biases. PsychInfo, Embase and Ovid Medline were used as data sources. We selected published articles reporting any child-based outcome in which any variant of Triple P was evaluated in relation to a comparison condition. Unpublished data, papers in languages other than English and some book chapters were not examined. Studies reporting Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory or Child Behavior Checklist scores as outcomes were used in the meta-analysis. Results: A total of 33 eligible studies was identified, most involving media-recruited families. Thirty-one of these 33 studies compared Triple P interventions with waiting list or no-treatment comparison groups. Most papers only reported maternal assessments of child behavior. Twenty-three papers were incorporated in the meta-analysis. No studies involved children younger than two-years old and comparisons of intervention and control groups beyond the duration of the intervention were only possible in five studies. For maternally-reported outcomes the summary effect size was 0.61 (95%CI 0.42, 0.79). Paternally-reported outcomes following Triple P intervention were smaller and did not differ significantly from the control condition (effect size 0.42 (95%CI -0.02, 0.87)). The two studies involving an active control group showed no between-group differences. There was limited evidence of publication bias, but there was substantial selective reporting bias, and preferential reporting of positive results in article abstracts. Thirty-two of the 33 eligible studies were authored by Triple-P affiliated personnel. No trials were registered and only two papers contained conflict of interest statements. Conclusions: In volunteer populations over the short term, mothers generally report that Triple P group interventions are better than no intervention, but there is concern about these results given the high risk of bias, poor reporting and potential conflicts of interest. We found no convincing evidence that Triple P interventions work across the whole population or that any benefits are long-term. Given the substantial cost implications, commissioners should apply to parenting programs the standards used in assessing pharmaceutical interventions. See related commentary: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/10/145

Source: UCC
How evidence-based is an ‘evidence-based parenting program’? A PRISMA systematic review and meta-analysis of Triple P

Background: Interventions to promote positive parenting are often reported to offer good outcomes for children but they can consume substantial resources and they require rigorous appraisal. Methods: Evaluations of the Triple P parenting program were subjected to systematic review and meta-analysis with analysis of biases. Psych Info, Embase and Ovid Medline were used as data sources. We selected published articles reporting any child-based outcome in which any variant of Triple P was evaluated in relation to a comparison condition. Unpublished data, papers in languages other than English and some book chapters were not examined. Studies reporting Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory or Child Behavior Checklist scores as outcomes were used in the meta-analysis. Results: A total of 33 eligible studies was identified, most involving media-recruited families. Thirty-one of these 33 studies compared Triple P interventions with waiting list or no-treatment comparison groups. Most papers only reported maternal assessments of child behavior. Twenty-three papers were incorporated in the meta-analysis. No studies involved children younger than two-years old and comparisons of intervention and control groups beyond the duration of the intervention were only possible in five studies. For maternally-reported outcomes the summary effect size was 0.61 (95%CI 0.42, 0.79). Paternally-reported outcomes following Triple P intervention were smaller and did not differ significantly from the control condition (effect size 0.42 (95%CI -0.02, 0.87)). The two studies involving an active control group showed no between-group differences. There was limited evidence of publication bias, but there was substantial selective reporting bias, and preferential reporting of positive results in article abstracts. Thirty-two of the 33 eligible studies were authored by Triple-P affiliated personnel. No trials were registered and only two papers contained conflict of interest statements. Conclusions: In volunteer populations over the short term, mothers generally report that Triple P group interventions are better than no intervention, but there is concern about these results given the high risk of bias, poor reporting and potential conflicts of interest. We found no convincing evidence that Triple P interventions work across the whole population or that any benefits are long-term. Given the substantial cost implications, commissioners should apply to parenting programs the standards used in assessing pharmaceutical interventions.

Source: UCC
How good are our academic programmes – the selfevaluation Approach

This study was conducted to design valid and reliable selfevaluation instruments for periodic assessment of academic programmes of Bolgatanga Polytechnic using evaluation experts and relevant stakeholders of the Polytechnic. Teachers, Administrators, students, alumni and employers of Polytechnic graduates were identified as the main relevant stakeholders for the selfevaluation process while curriculum, teaching, learning, assessment, output, outcome, programme organisation, resources and quality assurance constituted the main quality domains of the academic programmes. The methods of data collection adopted in the instrumentation included: survey questionnaire, interviews, focused group discussions and document analysis. In the instruments, a quality domain or an indicator is rated along the scale of very good, good, fair and unsatisfactory which translate into major strength, strength, weaknesses and major weakness respectively. To emphasise on a major strength, 90% or more of the total respondents should rate a domain or quality indicator as very good; 60% to 90% in favour of both very good and good emphasises strength; 50% or more in favour of unsatisfactory emphasises major weakness; and 40% to 50% in favour of both fair and unsatisfactory emphasises weakness. The presentation of evaluation feedback report is in a tabular format which gives picturesque view of the strengths and weaknesses of the quality indicators assessed. Validity and reliability of the instruments were ensured using expert views, pilot exercises and the Alpha Cronbach’s Reliability Test Model.

Source: UCC
How green are hotels in Accra? Environmental management practices and initiatives in tourist accommodation

There have been growing concerns about the impacts of hotels on the environment globally and in Accra where there is uncontrolled development of hotel facilities. This has led to calls for hotels to reduce their carbon footprints by embarking on environmental management practices since sustainable hotels lead to sustainable destinations. A number of hotels, mostly in the developed world have responded to such concerns by embarking on a number of environmental initiatives. However, it is larger hotels which are mostly multinationals or have international affiliations which have been at the forefront of environmental initiatives (Wahab and Pigram, 1997; Mauforth and Munt, 1998; Mensah, 2006). This study therefore determines how hotels in a developing sub-saran African city like Accra are responding to the calls for sustainable practices by looking at their environmental management initiatives and environmental management performance. The managers of 200 hotels which were selected through the stratified random sampling method were surveyed using a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire elicited information on the environmental management performance of the hotels in ten key areas. The results of the study indicated that though the hotels performed creditably in the area of environmental health, their performance in the area of voluntary environmental management activities such as eco-labelling and certification was not encouraging. Also, only 34% of the hotels had voluntarily instituted initiatives in improved environmental performance. The results have implications for environmental policy formulation, voluntary environmental initiatives and the realization of the millennium development goals

Source: UCC
How language and culture affect the learning of fractions: A case study in the Kingdom of Tonga

In this paper, I look at how different cultural practices go hand in hand with different discourses and how the two of them together have an impact on the learning of certain formal mathematical ideas. The findings are based on fieldwork carried out in the Kingdom of Tonga in 2011, with the aim of answering the question: How do the Tongan language and Tongan cultural practices shape discourses on fractions? I examine the place of fractions in the Tongan community of discourse. Importantly, the findings provide strong evidence to support the classical idea of linguistic relativism in the form of an updated version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Source: UCC
How neophilia drives international tourists’ acceptance of local cuisine

Culinary tourism has emerged as an area of practical interest for many developing destinations. Nonetheless, little is known about the factors shaping international tourists’ acceptance of local cuisine. Through an application of the Tri-Component Attitude Model, this study explores how attitudes are influenced by food-related personality traits of tourists. Using a survey of 396 international tourists, the study provides insights into the role of neophilia in explaining tourists’ cognitive, affective and conative responses toward local cuisines. The findings verify the significant influence of food neophilia and highlight the confounding effects of tourists’ idiosyncrasies. The study further offers distinct implications for theory and practice

Source: UCC
How the unique properties of soil kaolin affect the fertility of tropical soils

The kaolin ( s.l.) in many tropical soils is distinctly different from most specimen and industrial kaolins. Crystal 15structure is highly disordered and crystal sizes are much smaller than for specimen and industrial kaolins. The16crystal habit of soil kaolis isdiverse ranging through euhedra lhexagonal and anhedralplaty,spheroidalandtu17bular.The speciﬁc surface of soil kaolins is higher than for most industrial kaolins. Consequently, cationandanion 18retentioncapacitiesarehigheralthoughthereisnocompellingevidencethatthehighstructuraldisorderofsoil 19kaolinisassociatedwithagreaterspeci ﬁcreactivityofthekaolinsurface.Asmallamountofferricironsubstitutes 20for octahedral Al but there is generally little or no substitution of other cations. Soil kaolin commonly contains 21minoramountsofpotassiumbutthisispresentinmicalayerswithin,attachedorassociatedwithkaolincrystals 22sothatpotassiumisnotwithin the kaolin structure. Due to its considerable chemical reactivity soil kaolin helps 23provide an effective substrate to support agriculture and other land uses in the tropics.

Source: UCC
How Volatile is the Stock Exchange? A Look at the Ghana Stock Exchange

The purpose of the study was to analyse how volatile the Ghana Stock Exchange is. The objectives and the research questions of the study were executed by employing GARCH model to generate volatility of returns of Ghana Stock Exchange Composite Index (GSE-CI). The study employed explanatory research design. Secondary monthly data from Ghana Stock Exchange was used in the achievement of the research objective. The quantitative approach was employed. Pertaining the specific objective of the study which sought to examine the nature of the evolution of volatility on GSE, the study shows that the return of GSE showed an upward trend starting from 2011 through to 2017. In analysing the effect of the periods of high or low volatility on Ghana Stock Exchange, the study found that high or low volatility could serve as a guide to investors to make informed decisions regarding investment in the Ghana Stock market. Also, the finding of the study established that the period of low or high volatility of stock returns of Ghana Stock Exchange is significant in influencing investors decisions as to whether or not they should put their money in the stock market. The findings of this study have some implications for both policy makers and investors on the Ghana Stock Exchange as volatility of return of a listed firms arise from the fact that returns on stocks may be captured as the true intrinsic value of a firm and thus the investors might develop interest in investing on the Ghana Stock Exchange.

Source: UCC
HPV Testing on Vaginal/Cervical Nurse Assisted Self-Samples Versus Clinician-Taken Specimens and EHE HPV Prevalence, in Adama Town, Ethiopia

This study aimed to determine the feasibility of vaginal/cervical Nurse Assisted Self-Sampling (NASS) and the agreement between Human papillomavirus (HPV) test on self-samples versus clinician-taken (CT) specimens. Women participated voluntary for the cervical cancer screening at St. Aklesia Memorial Hospital. Eighty three (83) women provided a total of 166 coupled self and clinician taken specimens collected. Specimens were stored at room temperature for maximum 10 months and analyzed using validated the RIATOL qPCR HPV genotyping test, a quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (qPCR) high-throughput HPV E6, E7 assay. The average age of the participating women was 32 years. Seventy three of the 83 women (87.9%) felt that NASS was easy to use. An overall HPV, HR (High Risk) HPV and LR (Low Risk) HPV prevalence was 22.7% (15/66), 18.2% (12/66) and 6.1% (4/66), respectively. The overall HR HPV prevalence was 17.2% (NASS) and 15.5% (CT). The most prevalent HPV type was HPV51; HPV 16 was only detected in 1 woman (CT+NASS) and HPV18 only in 1 woman (CT). The overall measurement agreement between self- and clinician-collected samples was moderate with a kappa value of 0.576 (p <0.001). Life time partnered with more than two man were associated with HR HPV positivity (P value <0.001). There was strong statistical association between HR HPV positivity and visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA) positive (p value<0.001). Nurse assisted self-sampling for HPV testing could be seen as alternative option and an acceptable to Ethiopian women. The overall HRHPV prevalence was comparable with Sub-Saharan countries in the general population.

Source: UCC
HPV with genital pathogens and antibiotics resistance genes among female sex worker

Context: Genital infections and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) remain a real public health problem in the world predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa. The purpose of this study was to determine co-infection of HPV, Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG); Chlamydia trachomatis (CT); Mycoplasma genitalium (MG) and Trichomonas vaginalis (TV) among female sex workers in West Africa and to search antibiotics resistance genes. This study could serve as a support for the management of patients infected. Methods: The study took place in Ouagadougou in July 2019 and from June to July 2020. It was a cross-sectional study with descriptive and analytical aims. A total of 182 samples from sex workers of West and Central African origins, were analyzed by real-time PCR and resistance genes by classical PCR after DNA extraction. Data were entered and analyzed using the IBM SPSS software in its 21 version and Epi Info 6. Tables and figures were produced using IBM SPSS Statistics version 20 and Microsoft Excel 2007. Chi-square and fischer tests were used for comparisons Epi info version 7. with a significant difference for p 0.05. Results: These women, who came from nine different countries, were aged 17–50 years with an average age of 27.12 ± 6.09 years and had an average of 415.9 ± 75.2 sexual partners per year. HPV and vaginosis co-infection (NG, CT, MG and TV) was 85%. The prevalence of bacteria was: NG 13.74%, CT 11.54% and MG 11.54%. Among the HPV co-infections the most common were HPV/NG (15%), HPV/MG (12%), and HPV/CT (8%). %). The antibiotic resistance genes identified are: bla QNR B 24%, bla GES 22%, bla SHV 17%, bla CTX-M 13%; bla QNR S 1%. Conclusions: This study showed that the majority of sex workers of West and Central African origin working in Ouagadougou were infected with multiple STIs. This confirms that the presence of genital infections and STIs remains a real public health problem. The scale of these infections and the detection of associated resistance genes require increased surveillance of the molecular epidemiology of these pathogens.

Source: UCC
HtrA1 up-regulates expression of MMPs via Erk1/2/Rock-dependent pathways

Background: There are few studies that have identified the potential role of a high temperature requirement A1 (HtrA1) in intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD). This study was undertaken to investigate the regulatory role of HtrA1 in the pathogenesis of IDD. Material and Methods: The mRNA levels of HtrA1 and matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) of human intervertebral disc degeneration tissues were measured by real-time quantitative PCR, and a correlation between the expression level of HtrA1 and MMPs was also investigated. Human nucleus pulposus cells (HNPCs) were challenged with rHtrA1, and expression of MMPs was measured by real-time quantitative PCR, Western blotting, and ELISA. Moreover, to analyze the mechanism by which HtrA1 up-regulates MMPs, ERK1/2/ ROCK signaling pathway inhibitors were also used. Results: We found significant increases in mRNA expression of HtrA1 and MMP1, 3, 9, and 13 in IDD tissues compared with control. HtrA1 expression level was associated with the levels of MMP1, 3, and 13. Expression of MMP1, 3, and 13 mRNA and protein were significantly increased in HNPCs treated by rHtrA1. Moreover, administration of the ERK1/2 signaling pathway inhibitor or ROCK signaling pathway inhibitor decreased rHtrA1-induced MMPs production. Therefore, changes in HtrA1 expression could be involved in the pathogenesis of IDD. Conclusion: Our findings indicate that HtrA1 can induce increases in MMPs in HNPCs via the ERK1/2/ROCK signaling pathway, thus providing new insights into the role of HtrA1 in the pathogenesis of IDD

Source: UCC
Human Action Recognition in Surveillance Video of a Computer Laboratory

One of the driving forces of behavior recognition in video is the analysis of surveillance video. In this video, humans are monitored and their actions are classifed as being normal or a deviation from the norm. Local spatio-temporal features have gained attention to be an effective descriptor for action recognition in video. The problem of using texture as local descriptor is relatively unexplored. In this paper, a work on human action recognition in video is presented by proposing a fusion of appearance, motion and texture as local descriptor for the bag-of-feature model. Rigorous experiments was conducted on the recorded UTP dataset using the proposed descriptor. The average accuracy obtained was 85.92% for the fused description as compared to 75.06% for the combination of shape and motion descriptor. The result shows an improved performance for the proposed descriptor over the combination of appearance and motion as local descriptor of an interest point

Source: UCC
Human action recognition in surveillance video of a computer laboratory

One of the driving forces of behavior recognition in video is the analysis of surveillance video. In this video, humans are monitored and their actions are classified as being normal or a deviation from the norm. Local spatio-temporal features have gained attention to be an effective descriptor for action recognition in video. The problem of using texture as local descriptor is relatively unexplored. In this paper, a work on human action recognition in video is presented by proposing a fusion of appearance, motion and texture as local descriptor for the bag-of-feature model. Rigorous experiments were conducted in the recorded UTP dataset using the proposed descriptor. The average accuracy obtained was 85.92% for the fused descriptor as compared to 75.06% for the combination of shape and motion descriptor. The result shows an improved performance for the proposed descriptor over the combination of appearance and motion as local descriptor of an interest point

Source: UCC
Human capital and performance management in Ghana water company limited

The sight of gushing water from burst pipes in Accra and the scarcity of the same commodity in other communities prompted the researcher to examine the human capital, corporate culture, performance management and bottlenecks that hinder organizational performance in Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL). The research was cross-sectional, non-contrived, and non-causal. It was analytical consisting of a description and analysis of the phenomena of interest. A sample size of about 50% comprising 100 respondents were selected from GWCL Head Office and given questionnaires but only 80 successfully returned them. The sample was divided into mutually exclusive groups of junior and senior staff and a disproportionate stratified random sampling was used to create homogeneity within each group. Interviews, non-participant observation and personally administered questionnaires were the data collection instruments used. Descriptive statistics generated from the Statistical Product and Service Solutions was used to analyze the data. The analysis showed that GWCL has an educated senior staff but a less educated junior staff. The human capital is inadequate and the workforce is aging. Its corporate culture has no urgency for task accomplishment and management is grappling with managing waste. Therefore, it is recommended that management should recruit and train younger personnel, control and motivate staff while employees must eschew apathy and improve upon their performance.

Source: UCC
Human capital development in instructional supervision: window of hope or woe?

In a rapidly changing and increasingly globalized world, the success of nations, communities and individuals may be linked, now more than ever before, to how they adapt to change, learn and share knowledge. From a very broad perspective, one can look at why there is the need for development of instructional supervisors in assuring quality teaching and learning. This paper considers the human as an economic agent for society; it looks at the belief system that characterizes supervision in Ghana. After a careful review of some selected literature it concludes the study with a discussion of analysis of data gathered by means of survey instruments using structured interviews administered on some experienced persons in the field of education with emphasis on instructional supervision and leadership. The findings points to the fact that it is worthwhile to develop the human capital of instructional supervisors. The study consequently recommended that the state and the individual are the principal funders of such capacity building avenues and as such an agreed framework should be built for it.

Source: UCC