1,720,982 research outputs found
Farming systems and household food security in Tanzania: the case of Mvomero and Kishapu districts
Get PDFAbout three out of every four income-earners in Tanzania are small-scale farmers and food insecurity remains a chronic problem for many of them. Around 48% of households in rural areas were either moderately or severely food energy deficient in 2011 and 39% of rural children under 5 years were stunted in 2013. To improve food security in Tanzania, it is important to understand the existing farming systems and their relationship with household food security. This study was conducted in two distinctly different agro-ecological zones of Tanzania, namely Kishapu and Mvomero Districts, to determine the main factors which influence farm households’ choice of farming systems and how these associate with food security. Data were collected during both pre- and post-harvest seasons in 2014 from 506 farm households, and augmented with market surveys, key informant interviews and focus group discussions. Four main farming systems were identified based on: crops cultivated; degree of market orientation for particular crops; and the number of livestock units owned. Household food security status was measured and a combination of Expected Utility Theory and Theory of Planned Behaviour used to analyse the factors associated with household choice of farming system. The study found that households which diversified their income sources through off-farm activities were more likely to have better food access in the lean (pre-harvest) periods. The factors influencing decisions on farming systems were related to the household size, farming context and farm characteristics. In the semi-arid and remote areas of Kishapu, larger households were more likely to choose a Mixed Crop and Livestock farming system, indicating that larger family size ensured the supply of needed labour for both livestock keeping and cropping activities. In the higher rainfall and more accessible district of Mvomero, households were more likely to practice a Single Food Crop farming system and were compelled to seek out off-farm work. The study recommends that strategies to improve food security in rural areas should attempt to: enhance income from farming, promote off-farm income generating activities, and promote behavioural change communication on what is culturally regarded as food in the study area
DIVERSE AND LINKED: FARMERS' ORGANISATIONS IN TANZANIA
Get PDFExperiences from research and extension projects being run at Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) and elsewhere in Tanzania, indicate that farmers' groups can play an instrumental role in the generation of appropriate solutions to small farmers' problems. An approach which uses farmers! groups as points of entry in the rural development process must take into account the diversity of these groups, their inter-linkages or networking, their independence and their relationships with professionals. Both farmers and professionals have to be willing to devote time to know and work with each other. This approach poses two challenges: for professionals to accept (and promote) the increasing emancipation of farmers, and for all concerned to challenge pre-conceived notions of the valuation of time and of the process of development
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
The use of schools for socioeconomic transformation: a study of Tanzanian secondary school students' beliefs, attitudes and aspirations toward farming and rural life
No full textPhD-ThesisPurpose
The purpose of the study was to assess Tanzanian
secondary students' beliefs, attitudes and aspirations
regarding farming and rural life, and how these relate to
school agricultural experiences and to individual and
situational characteristics of the students.
Methodology
Data were secured through a structured question
naire administered to a sample of 867 Tanzanian government
secondary school students.
The dependent variables for the study were
students' beliefs, attitudes and aspirations with respect
to farming and rural life.
The independent variables were
the school agricultural learning experiences, the sex,
grade and home location of the student, parental education
and occupation, and type of farming at home.
The analysis tested the relationship between the
independent variables and students' beliefs, attitudes
and aspirations toward farming and rural life.Ill
Findings and Conclusions
1. Students’ beliefs were mainly positive while
their attitudes were either positive or neutral, with
very few having negative beliefs or attitudes.
About one-
third of the students aspired to agricultural careers
including farming while half of them preferred working
in the rural areas.
2. Although students
who have had practical school
agricultural experiences were more likely to hold positive
beliefs, students' beliefs were more strongly related to
home background characteristics.
Students from rural
farm background were more likely to hold positive beliefs.
3. Students who have had practical school agricul
tural experiences were more likely to hold positive
attitudes.
Likewise, male and lower grade students were
more likely to hold positive attitudes.
Students’
attitudes were not related to home background character
istics .
4. Generally, school agriculture seemed to influence
students' aspirations toward rural-based agricultural
occupations.
But as students progressed up the academic
hierarchy their aspirations shifted progressively to
urban non-agricultural occupations.
Also students fromIV
less educated rural backgrounds were more Likely to aspire
to rural agricultural occupations compared to those from
more educated urban backgrounds.
5. Although school agriculture may help in
reorienting students’ expectations toward rural and
agricultural occupations, its effectiveness is severely
limited since schools continue to be the sole basis for
recruitment to elite positions and as such continue to
socialize students toward more elitist expectations,
contrary to policy objectives
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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