1,721,085 research outputs found
What does a disability-inclusive pandemic response mean for Liberia and how can it lead to genuine systemic change?
No full textPeople with disabilities globally have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19
pandemic (FCDO, 2020; UN, 2020), but there has been little research on how people
with disabilities in low-income countries have been affected by the response to the
pandemic, and how this compares with other emergency health responses. My
research aimed to understand in-depth how people with disabilities in Liberia
experienced the COVID-19 response, and how this compares with their experience of
the Ebola response. This is a unique opportunity to analyse systemic ways in which
people with disabilities face exclusion from emergency health responses and public
health programmes, putting them at greater risk.
Epidemic responses are also an opportunity to reveal broader structural inequalities.
People with disabilities faced significant exclusion during the Ebola response in Liberia
(Kett, Cole, Beato, Carew, Ngafuan, Sekou Konneh, et al., 2021) and my research
sought to understand whether and how this was different in the COVID-19 response.
My research has two main questions:
▪ How have people with disabilities in Liberia experienced recent epidemic
responses and public health measures and to what extent have they been
included?
▪ What approaches can enable people with disabilities to participate in and lead
inclusive systemic change?
My project gathered in-depth qualitative data on disability in Liberia, building upon previous
research1. My research has three main strands: a photovoice project with people with
disabilities and caregivers and service providers; key informant interviews with actors
involved in the COVID-19 and Ebola epidemic responses; and life-history interviews
with people with disabilities in urban and rural settings.
Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006, 2012)
using theoretical frameworks on structural violence (Galtung, 1969; Farmer, 2004) and
social justice (Fraser, 1997, 2009). Results formed a multidimensional understanding of
the impact of epidemic response and recovery on people with disabilities. I examined
inequalities experienced by people with disabilities during public health crises,
exploring issues including participation, trust, and poverty (Austin et al, 2021; Kett et al,
2021) to understand how people with disabilities can achieve meaningful inclusion in
epidemic responses.
Findings challenge normative assumptions around humanitarian responses to show
that systemic exclusions and material deprivations experienced by people with
disabilities during times of health crises exacerbate existing systems of exclusion and
pervasive ableism, rendering people with disabilities ‘invisible’ to epidemic responses.
Results also showed that rurality was a driver of structural violence experienced by
people with disabilities, which increased between the Ebola and COVID-19 outbreaks.
However, findings also contested assumptions around people with disabilities as
passive recipients of aid, revealing a confidence among people with disabilities to
actively ‘combat’ COVID-19 due to their learning from the Ebola outbreak.
This research makes a timely contribution by centring the experiences of people with
disabilities during two public health emergencies in an extremely resource-constrained
context. These findings have relevance beyond Liberia, and the empirical data can offer
lessons for other low-income settings on how disability can be meaningfully included in
humanitarian preparedness, planning and emergency response and recovery. The
research also has global relevance, where insights can inform more inclusive
emergency planning and implementation at international levels. By highlighting the
systemic gaps encountered by people with disabilities in emergency responses, this
work underscores the urgent need to embed disability inclusion as a core principle and
not as an afterthought in crisis response frameworks everywhere. Given the increasing
frequency and complexity of global health crises, this research is well-placed to have
impact within academia and in global health, development and advocacy arenas
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Testing, tracing and isolation in compartmental models
Full text linkExisting compartmental mathematical modelling methods for epidemics, such as SEIR models, cannot accurately represent effects of contact tracing. This makes them inappropriate for evaluating testing and contact tracing strategies to contain an outbreak. An alternative used in practice is the application of agent- or individual-based models (ABM). However ABMs are complex, less well-understood and much more computationally expensive. This paper presents a new method for accurately including the effects of Testing, contact-Tracing and Isolation (TTI) strategies in standard compartmental models. We derive our method using a careful probabilistic argument to show how contact tracing at the individual level is reflected in aggregate on the population level. We show that the resultant SEIR-TTI model accurately approximates the behaviour of a mechanistic agent-based model at far less computational cost. The computational efficiency is such that it can be easily and cheaply used for exploratory modelling to quantify the required levels of testing and tracing, alone and with other interventions, to assist adaptive planning for managing disease outbreaks
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
- …
