ghanaopendata/ghanaian-research-english huggingface dataset:
Time Management and Employees’ Performance at the Takoradi and Sekondi Districts of the National Health Insurance Authority

ABSTRACT The study examined whether time management practices are predictive of employees' performance at the Takoradi and Sekondi Districts of National Health Insurance Authority, ascertained the various ranges of time planning adopted by the staff of the Takoradi and Sekondi Districts of National Health Insurance Scheme and the processes of planning and how staff efficiently or inefficiently use time in the performance of their daily work tasks. Ascertain how workers of Takoradi and Sekondi Districts of National Health Insurance Schemes manage their time in the short-range planning. The specific objectives were to; ascertain how workers of Takoradi and Sekondi Districts manage their time in the long-range planning; explore the attitude of the staff of the National Health Insurance Scheme regarding time management; assess how efficiently staff of Takoradi and Sekondi National Health Insurance Schemes their time; identify how inefficiently staff of Takoradi and Sekondi National Health Insurance Schemes manages their time; and finally to, make appropriate recommendations on how to efficiently manage time in the National Health Insurance Scheme. Data were collected from 80 employees of Takoradi and Sekondi Districts through questionnaire administration, interviews and observations. The data were evaluated with descriptive statistics within the SPSS software suite. Based on the aforementioned findings of the study, it was evident that proper time management is a resource for organisational effectiveness. Thus, it is suggested that firms should adhere carefully to good time management in order to give better services to their customers and services providers. Time planners, managers, leaders and customers' management log to demonstrate how time should be used.

Source: UCC
Time management practices among staff of district education offices in the Cental Region.

Time may be the most valuable thing one deals with, and it can neither be bought nor recaptured. However, significant amount of this valuable resource is wasted by staff of institutions due to the activities of time wasters. The purpose of the study was to find outthe existence or otherwise of time wasters and determine their perceived impact on the time management practices among staff of the district education offices in the Central Region. The time management control measures were also assessed. The descriptive survey design was employed for the study. The simple random and purposive sampling techniques were adopted to select the respondents from six (6) district education offices in the Central Region. In all, 285 respondents were sampled to participate in the study. Structured questionnaire, interview guide and observational chart were the instruments used for the study. Percentages were calculated for the summary of the responses. The major findings of the study were that staff of the education offices waste a lot of official time due to the activities of time wasters,thus about 15% of tasks were left unfinished at the end of a given period. Also, there were some time control measures available at the education offices. However, the lack of proper monitoring and supervision had rendered them ineffective. From the findings, it has been recommended that there should be an effective supervision of official time utilisation by staff of the district education offices. Also, time management training should be incorporated into in-service training programmes for staff.

Source: UCC
Time management practices of administrative staff of the University of Education, Winneba

Time management is a conscious control of the amount of time spent on work activities in order to maximize personal efficiency. In nearly all institutions, there are many trivial events that waste time that have to be identified and separated from the vital few on which scarce time must really be spent. The study attempted to investigate time wasters which inhibit the amount of planned time spent on work in University of Education, Winneba (UEW) by educational administrators and administrative staff. The study also explored the time management practices used in order to maximize efficiency. The research design employed for the study was a descriptive survey. In view of the varying professional groups among the subjects of the study, a convenient sample of both the administrators and their staff were used for the study. The sample size of 83 consisted of 22 educational administrators and 61 administrative staff who worked in offices of these administrators. Questionnaires which contained both open and closed ended items were administered to these subjects. The results showed that both the administrators and staff perceived receiving drop-in visitors, receiving calls on private mobile phones, and looking for documents because of inefficient filing systems, as the three worst culprits in terms of wasting time in UEW. While the administrators ranked “saying 'NO' to work which was outside their plan” as the seventh time waster, the staff ranked it among as the fifth. Thus, they both agreed to some extent that 'saying' 'no' to work outside one.s plan. was one of the worst culprits in terms of wasting time in UEW. The administrators and staff however disagreed on the fourth time waster, “running out of materials needed to carry out work”, with the latter rating it very high. Finally, on the measures used to curb time mismanagement practices in UEW, it was found that over 90% of the administrators „set priorities in order of importance of the tasks that staff do. and „use diary or personal organizers. in their offices. However, it was found that over a quarter of the administrators do not use planners, fail to prepare weekly schedules and do not use time book in the office to track staff movements. It was recommended that administrators in UEW put in place a policy to make use of good time management measures in order to minimize time that is wasted. In particular, the policy should ensure administrators set goals which are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely (i.e. SMART), prepare and keep to daily, weekly, monthly and yearly planner/diary, as well as use time book to track staff movement in and out of their offices.

Source: UCC
Time management practices of the administrative heads of Ghana National College, Cape Coast

The study was on the time management practices of the administrative heads of Ghana National College (G.N.C.). The purpose of this study was to identify the time wasters and determine their impact on the administrative heads of Ghana National College in their time management practices. It was also to find out how the administrative heads of Ghana National college control their time wasters to achieve maximum result in their time management practices. The study has attempted answering the three research questions raised. (i) What were the problems or activities that disturbed the time management practices with regard to set goals of the administrative heads of Ghana National College? (ii) To what extent did the time wasters affect the achievement of set goals of the administrative heads of Ghana National College? (iii) What strategies were put in place by the administrative heads of Ghana National College to control the time wasters in order to achieve maximum result of set goals in their use of time? Appropriate literature and other theoretical concepts on time management were appraised. To help in answering the research questions raised, the designed instruments, which were questionnaire and interview guide were used to collect data from the selected population of 36 administrative heads. The statistical method used in the analysis was descriptive statistics. That is, simple percentages were calculated for the summary of the vanous responses. The main findings of the study are that some major time wasters were with the administrative heads and these time wasters had negative impact on their time management. Reviewing and prioritizing demands on time has not been a regular practice of the administrative heads. Lastly, not much control measures or strategies were put in place to reduce the negative impact of the time wasters on time management practices of the administrative heads. To avert the negative impact of the time wasters on the time management practices of the administrative heads, some suggested strategies and guidelines were recommended to enhance control over the time wasters. Finally, the benefits to be derived from knowing how to manage time wisely have been spelt out for the perusal of all concerned with the time management practices.

Source: UCC
Time series analysis and forecasting for wind speeds using support vector regression coupled with artificial intelligent algorithms

Wind speed/power has received increasing attention around the earth due to its renewable nature as well as environmental friendliness. With the global installed wind power capacity rapidly increasing, wind industry is growing into a large-scale business. Reliable short-term wind speed forecasts play a practical and crucial role in wind energy conversion systems, such as the dynamic control of wind turbines and power system scheduling. In this paper, an intelligent hybrid model for short-term wind speed prediction is examined; the model is based on cross correlation (CC) analysis and a support vector regression (SVR) model that is coupled with brainstorm optimization (BSO) and cuckoo search (CS) algorithms, which are successfully utilized for parameter determination. The proposed hybrid models were used to forecast short-term wind speeds collected from four wind turbines located on a wind farm in China. The forecasting results demonstrate that the intelligent hybrid models outperform single models for shortterm wind speed forecasting, which mainly results from the superiority of BSO and CS for parameter optimization

Source: UCC
Time series analysis of the consumer price index in Ghana (1964-2009)

The dissertation was on Time Series Analysis of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in Ghana for the period 1964 to 2009. The main objective of the study was to determine the general trend pattern and to develop a model for forecasting the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the old and new series. In order to achieve these objectives, CPI figures for the period were obtained from the prices section of Ghana Statistical Service.The major statistical software used to analyze the data was the MINITAB and SPSS.The study revealed for the old series that the index has increase to 72488.38 percentage points from 1965 to 1997. Also the highest inflation rate of 121.35 percent was recorded in the year 1983 and the lowest inflation rate of - 87.09 percent occurred in the year 1978. For the new series it revealed that the index has increase to 165.15 percentage points from 1998 to 2009 and the highest inflation rate of 33.59 percent was recorded in the year 2001 while the lowest inflation rate of 10.73 percent occurred in the year 2007. The yearly CPI shows an increasing trend for both the old and new series.The trend analysis for the old series shows that the average change of CPI from one year to the other is 43.89 percent and that for the new series was 139.882 percent. Four main smoothing techniques were used for forecasting the yearly CPI figures and from the empirical evidence gathered the Holt’s exponential smoothing is most significant for the old series and AR(1) of the ARIMA model was the most appropriate technique for the forecast of the new series.

Source: UCC
Time, knowledge, and the clash of Civilizations: An Islamic approach

For Muslims, Islam is time conscious and eternal, its wisdom and rules having emanated from High are not only constant but are, simultaneously, responsive to changing circumstances of every environment and culture or civilization. Its philosophies apply to all times and places. The religion establishes the moral guidelines for good behavior at all aspects of life on which legal rules can develop and it also orders humans to regulate their activities in worldly life according to their time, conditions and environmental backgrounds. Contrary to this, some people presume that the passage of time provides adequate ground for the need for new guidance. For them, a religion revealed fourteen centuries ago must have grown unfashionable and unsuitable to satisfy the needs of the new epoch, meet the challenges of scientific knowledge, and augment the excitement of modern civilizations. This paper examines the Islamic perspective of time and the all-encompassing nature of its wisdom or knowledge (which is beyond the absolute restriction of time and space) and its approach to the clash of civilizations. The theoretical framework is Huntington’s CoC-theory. It argues that the clash between the Islamic nations and Western powers, for Muslims, is not a struggle for cultural identity as the theory postulated, but as a result of the desire of the West to obstruct the establishment of values based on Islamic religious wisdom which is dearer to the Islamic nations than the West estimates

Source: UCC
Time-multipatch discontinuous galerkin space-time isogeometric analysis of parabolic evolution problems

In this paper, we present a new time-multipatch discontinuous Galerkin Isogeometric Analysis (IgA) technology for solving parabolic initial-boundary problems in space and time simultaneously. We prove coercivity of the IgA variational problem with respect to a suitably chosen norm that together with boundedness, consistency, and approximation results yields a priori discretization error estimates in this norm. Furthermore, we provide efficient parallel generation and parallel multigrid solution technologies. Finally, we present first numerical results on massively parallel computers

Source: UCC
Timely Initiation and Exclusive Breastfeeding Rates at Adentan Municipality in Ghana

Early initiation of breastfeeding (BF) has been recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) for optimum infant growth and development. Objectives: To determine the factors associated with early initiation of BF, exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) duration and timely introduction of complementary feeding. Methods: This was a quantitative descriptive cross-sectional design that involved 391 mothers sampled conveniently. Early initiation of BF, EBF duration, time of introduction of complementary foods and the types of complementary foods fed infants were documented. Proportions were presented for the outcome variables. Chi square and Fishers exact tests were used to evaluate the associations between the outcome variables and the independent predictor variables. Results: The mothers were aged between 15-45 years and 84% initiated BF within 30 minutes to 1 hour after delivery. Less than half (46%) of respondents initiated complementary feeding (CF) at six months postpartum. About 40.4% fed infants formula milk during the complementary period, 32.2% fed infants locally prepared foods during the complementary period. There was a statistically significant association between gender of child (χ2= 2.7; p< 0.01) and exclusive breastfeeding for six months. Maternal factors were significantly associated with knowledge level in EBF duration (χ2=18.34; p < 0.0001) and time of initiation of breastfeeding (χ2=22.40; p < 0.0001). Institutional factors that showed statistical significance exclusive breastfeeding for six months were place of delivery (χ2=14.60; p< 0.001) and presence of attendant at birth (χ2=14.18; p<0.003). Conclusion: Maternal and types of health facilities that mothers visited during antenatal and where the delivered influenced BF initiation, duration and appropriate complementary

Source: UCC
Timely Initiation and Exclusive Breastfeeding Rates at Adentan Municipality in Ghana

Background: Early initiation of breastfeeding (BF) has been recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) for optimum infant growth and development. Objectives: To determine the factors associated with early initiation of BF, exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) duration and timely introduction of complementary feeding. Methods: This was a quantitative descriptive cross-sectional design that involved 391 mothers sampled conveniently. Early initiation of BF, EBF duration, time of introduction of complementary foods and the types of complementary foods fed infants were documented. Proportions were presented for the outcome variables. Chi square and Fishers exact tests were used to evaluate the associations between the outcome variables and the independent predictor variables. Results: The mothers were aged between 15-45 years and 84% initiated BF within 30 minutes to 1 hour after delivery. Less than half (46%) of respondents initiated complementary feeding (CF) at six months postpartum. About 40.4% fed infants formula milk during the complementary period, 32.2% fed infants locally prepared foods during the complementary period. There was a statistically significant association between gender of child (χ2= 2.7; p< 0.01) and exclusive breastfeeding for six months. Maternal factors were significantly associated with knowledge level in EBF duration (χ2=18.34; p < 0.0001) and time of initiation of breastfeeding (χ2=22.40; p < 0.0001). Institutional factors that showed statistical significance exclusive breastfeeding for six months were place of delivery (χ2=14.60; p< 0.001) and presence of attendant at birth (χ2=14.18; p<0.003). Conclusion: Maternal and types of health facilities that mothers visited during antenatal and where the delivered influenced BF initiation, duration and appropriate complementary feeding practices.

Source: UCC
Timely Initiation and Exclusive Breastfeeding Rates at Adentan Municipality in Ghana

Background: Early initiation of breastfeeding (BF) has been recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) for optimum infant growth and development. Objectives: To determine the factors associated with early initiation of BF, exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) duration and timely introduction of complementary feeding. Methods: This was a quantitative descriptive cross-sectional design that involved 391 mothers sampled conveniently. Early initiation of BF, EBF duration, time of introduction of complementary foods and the types of complementary foods fed infants were documented. Proportions were presented for the outcome variables. Chi square and Fishers exact tests were used to evaluate the associations between the outcome variables and the independent predictor variables. Results: The mothers were aged between 15-45 years and 84% initiated BF within 30 minutes to 1 hour after delivery. Less than half (46%) of respondents initiated complementary feeding (CF) at six months postpartum. About 40.4% fed infants formula milk during the complementary period, 32.2% fed infants locally prepared foods during the complementary period. There was a statistically significant association between gender of child (χ2= 2.7; p< 0.01) and exclusive breastfeeding for six months. Maternal factors were significantly associated with knowledge level in EBF duration (χ2=18.34; p < 0.0001) and time of initiation of breastfeeding (χ2=22.40; p < 0.0001). Institutional factors that showed statistical significance exclusive breastfeeding for six months were place of delivery (χ2=14.60; p< 0.001) and presence of attendant at birth (χ2=14.18; p<0.003). Gender of child was Conclusion: Maternal and types of health facilities that mothers visited during antenatal and where the delivered influenced BF initiation, duration and appropriate complementary feeding practices.

Source: UCC
Timing of First Sexual Intercourse and Number of Lifetime Sexual Partners in Sub-Saharan Africa

The timing of first sexual intercourse (FSI) has been linked with subsequent sexual risk-taking behaviours and associated negative health outcomes. Nonetheless, there is a lack of multi-countries studies exploring the relationship between timing of FSI and subsequent number of sexual partnerships. Our aim in this paper was to aggregate evidence from 34 sub-Saharan African countries to investigate the association between age at FSI and lifetime number of sexual partners, using Demographic and Health Survey data. Descriptive and multilevel mixed effects Poisson regression techniques were applied to the data. The findings reveal a significant association between age at FSI and subsequent number of lifetime sexual partners. This association remained post adjusting for education, wealth, marital status and residence for both men and women. Beyond these, the results showed that wealth worked in opposite direction in men and women—higher wealth status was protective for women while it exposed men to higher number of lifetime sexual partners. Higher education exposed both women and men to increased number of lifetime partnerships. We conclude that there is an association between delayed onset of sexual intercourse and number of sexual partners over time, regardless of gender and socio-demographic background. Sexual and reproductive health programmes calling for sexual partner reduction should focus more on age of sexual debut while factoring in the influence of the various socio-demographic dynamics.

Source: UCC
TIMING OF SEXUAL DEBUT AMONG UNMARRIED YOUTHS AGED 15–24 YEARS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

This study aimed to contribute to the evidence on the timing of sexual debut in young people in sub-Saharan African countries. Data were extracted from 34 nationally representative surveys conducted in the region between 2006 and 2014. The study sample comprised unmarried women (n = 167,932) and men (n = 76,900) aged 15–24 years. Descriptive techniques and Cox proportional regression models were used to estimate the timing of sexual debut, and Kaplan–Meier hazard curves were used to describe the patterns of sexual debut in each country by sex. For the countries studied, sexual debut for both women and men occurred between the ages of 15 and 18 years, with median ages of 16 for women and 17 for men. Overall, education and household wealth provided significant protection against early sexual debut among women, but the reverse was found among men for wealth. Women in rural areas, in female-headed households and in Central, South and West Africa reported higher hazards of early commencement of sexual activity than their counterparts in urban, male-headed households and East Africa. However, the impact of these variables on male sexual debut did not follow a consistent pattern. Varied timing, as well as country-specific risk factors associated with sexual debut for young women and men across sub-Saharan Africa, were identified. Sexual health programmes and interventions for young people may require different approaches for young women and men.

Source: UCC