1,720,977 research outputs found
The Impact of Management Practices on Student and School Performance in Ghana
No full textThe importance of management practices for productivity has been shown in private firms by some research but there is little evidence for the public sector. In this paper, we seek to ascertain whether management practices matters for student and school performance in Ghana. This study uses data from a survey that collected data from senior high schools across Ghana. We apply factor analysis to identify different dimension of management practices and relate this with variation in test scores. While our measures of management quality may be endogenous, we find that management practices, such as monitoring, Human Resource Management (HRM), external inspections and internal strategies are correlated with student achievement. Students from better managed schools perform more successfully in the test and are more likely to pass the test. However, no firm conclusion can be drawn on the school level performance. The result also shows that headteacher characteristics, school qualities, teacher qualities and student characteristics can affect student test scores to some extent
Essais sur l’économie de l’adaptation aux changements climatiques
Get PDFThis research examines the effects of climate change adaptation measures on ecosystem services in the province of Quebec (Canada and in the agricultural sector in Sub-Saharan Africa. It comprises three articles. The first article aims to evaluate the impact of adopting climate change adaptation strategies on the increase in agricultural yields, analyzing the effect of each strategy individually. To do this, it relies on data collected from 5,091 agricultural households in four African countries : Burkina Faso, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, and Uganda. The study also includes the analysis of spatial climate data over a 30-year period, covering five climate variables. The results reveal that adaptation significantly increases agricultural yields, thanks notably to better access to credit and adequate information. I estimated a simultaneous equations model with endogenous switching to account for the heterogeneity in the decision to adapt or not, as well as for the unobservable characteristics of farmers and their farms. The results show that the adoption of adaptation measures increases agricultural yields by 281 kg, an increase of 23.3% compared to the average annual yield. The adoption of adaptation strategies, whether individual or combined, significantly increases agricultural yields. Thus, the combination of adjusting planting dates and choosing cultivated varieties is associated with the highest agricultural yields, namely 343.3 kg per hectare. The second article of this thesis uses the same data sets and methodology as the f irst to examine the effectiveness of climate change adaptation strategies in reducing farmers’ vulnerability to climatic hazards. The results indicate a significant reduction in this vulnerability due to the implementation of these measures. However, the impact of adaptation on reducing climate risks varies from country to country. The final article of this research examines the economic benefits of seven adaptation strategies aimed at improving both ecosystem services and open-water fishing in Lake Saint-Pierre, Quebec. For this, the analysis is based on data collected from recent visits of 212 fishermen across six different sites on the lake, as well as on responses obtained through discrete choice surveys. The results reveal that the implementation of these measures could result in annual gains estimated at about 9.62 million dollars for open-water f ishing. Moreover, this study provides important insights into the integration of data from revealed and stated preferences, highlighting a notable divergence between hypothetical choices and decisions made during actual fishing activities.Cette recherche examine les effets des mesures d’adaptation au changement climatique sur les services écosystémiques dans la province de Québec (Canada et dans le domaine agricole en Afrique subsaharienne. Elle comprend trois articles. Le premier article vise à évaluer l’impact de l’adoption de stratégies d’adaptation climatique sur l’accroissement des rendements agricoles, en analysant l’effet de chaque stratégie individuellement. Pour ce faire, il s’appuie sur des données recueillies auprès de 5 091 ménages agricoles dans quatre pays africains : Burkina Faso, Sao Tomé-et-Principe, Sierra Leone et Ouganda. L’étude inclut également l’analyse de données climatiques spatiales sur une période de 30 ans, couvrant cinq variables climatiques. Les résultats révèlent que l’adaptation augmente significativement les rendements agricoles, grâce notamment à un meilleur accès au crédit et à des informations adéquates. J’ai estimé un modèle d’équations simultanées avec commutation endogène pour tenir compte de l’hétérogénéité dans la décision de s’adapter ou non, ainsi que des caractéristiques non observables des agriculteurs et de leurs exploitations. Les résultats montrent que l’adoption de mesures d’adaptation augmente les rendements agricoles de 281 kg, soit une hausse de 23,3% par rapport au rendement annuel moyen. L’adoption de stratégies d’adaptation, qu’elles soient individuelles ou combinées, accroît significativement les rendements agricoles. Ainsi, la combinaison de l’ajustement des dates de semis et du choix de variétés cultivées est associée aux rendements agricoles les plus élevés, soit 343,3 kg par hectare. Le deuxième article de cette thèse utilise les mêmes ensembles de données et la même méthodologie que le premier pour examiner l’efficacité des stratégies d’adaptation au changement climatique dans la diminution de la vulnérabilité des agriculteurs aux aléas climatiques. Les résultats indiquent une réduction notable de cette vulnérabilité grâce à l’application de ces mesures. Cependant, l’impact de l’adaptation sur la réduction des risques climatiques varie d’un pays à l’autre. Le dernier article de cette recherche examine les bénéfices économiques de sept stratégies d’adaptation destinées à améliorer à la fois les services écosystémiques et la pêche en eau libre dans le Lac Saint-Pierre, au Québec. Pour ce faire, l’analyse s’appuie sur des données collectées lors des visites récentes de 212 pêcheurs répartis sur six sites différents du lac, ainsi que sur les réponses obtenues via des enquêtes de choix discret. Les résultats révèlent que la mise en oeuvre de ces mesures pourrait entraîner des gains annuels estimés à environ 9,62 millions de dollars pour la pêche en eau libre. De plus, cette étude offre des perspectives importantes sur l’intégration des données issues des préférences révélées et déclarées, mettant en lumière une divergence notable entre les choix hypothétiques et les décisions prises lors d’activités de pêche concrètes
Insurance networks outside the village and social network analysis: Evidence from rural Malawi
No full textThe development literature has consistently overlooked out of village links in the evaluation of informal insurance networks. This paper provides evidence that such an oversight may give a flawed impression of network formation decisions, given the high proportion of non-local transfer links in most studies to date – almost 60% in the Malawian data used for this study. Using a series of OLS and probit regressions, the results of this paper point to an endogenous propensity for households to link with non-local individuals for their informal insurance networks in a manner that distinguishes them from within-village insurance links
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe 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
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