1,720,970 research outputs found
Effectiveness of flood response mechanisms for enhancing resilient livelihoods in Tsholotsho District of Zimbabwe
No full textPhD (Rural Development)Institute of Rural DevelopmentFlooding is a recurrent natural disaster that disrupts livelihoods, damages infrastructure and affects economic stability, particularly in vulnerable communities. Due to geographical and environmental factors, Tsholotsho District in Zimbabwe is highly susceptible to flooding. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of flood response mechanisms for enhancing resilient livelihoods in Tsholotsho and provide actionable insights for policymakers and rural development practitioners. The research used an exploratory sequential mixed methods design, combining qualitative (semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and document analysis) with quantitative methods (closed-ended questionnaires) This approach gave a understanding of flood response challenges by triangulating findings from various sources. The study focused on flood victims who received aid from organizations, as well as key stakeholders in disaster response, including government departments, NGOs and community leaders. The study specifically targeted wards 6, 7 and 8, in the district which all have a history of severe flooding. Tsholotsho’s vulnerability is heightened by its location on the low-lying Gwayi River, the prevalence of Kalahari and clay soils and the lack of water storage infrastructure. These environmental factors, coupled with climate variability, have resulted in recurrent floods, severely impacting livelihoods. Key findings included significant barriers to effective flood response, such as inadequate financial and technical resources. Government departments struggled to implement proactive measures and an overreliance on donor aid and centralized national funding mechanisms weakened preparedness and delayed recovery efforts. Institutional gaps, including poor coordination among stakeholders and the absence of context-specific disaster management policies, also undermined flood resilience. The study highlighted the need for localized, participatory approaches that integrate both indigenous knowledge and scientific expertise. Key recommendations included the establishment of resilient infrastructure, such as water storage facilities and the enhancement of early warning systems. Strengthening institutional capacity through improved coordination and capacity-building efforts was identified as critical for sustainable flood response. The study emphasized the importance of improving the capacity of local institutions, as government departments often lack the resources and expertise to implement disaster risk reduction strategies effectively. Additionally, better coordination between government, NGOs and communities is essential to ensure that flood response mechanisms are effective and equitable. The research underscored the role of community participation in disaster management. The lack of community involvement in decision-making has led to interventions that do not fully address local needs. Therefore, empowering communities to actively engage in disaster planning, response and recovery is crucial for long-term resilience. Through integrating local knowledge into flood risk management strategies, communities can contribute
valuable insights that enhance disaster response effectiveness. This study challenges top-down disaster management approaches, advocating for inclusive, bottom-up frameworks that empower local communities. The proposed framework stresses the importance of integrated strategies that combine community participation and institutional strengthening. The findings provide valuable insights for flood-prone rural areas globally, offering a roadmap for transforming flood response mechanisms into sustainable development tools. The research contributes to rural development theory by highlighting the intersection of environmental vulnerability, institutional capacity and community participation in disaster resilience, offering a foundation for future research and policy innovation in disaster management
Effects of short term vocational trainings on income distribution among young people in rural Zimbabwe
No full textA research report submitted to the University of the Witwatersrand in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education, School of EducationYouth unemployment remains a global challenge. Increasingly, improving access to skills for employability is seen as a viable policy options to deal with this issue with expanding access to technical and vocational education and training being the preferred option. There have been several examples of such efforts across the African continent. In Zimbabwe, one such programme was designed to deliver short-term vocational skills training targeting young people in the rural informal economy. This study sought to analyse the effectiveness of this intervention. Firstly, the study explored the relationship between educational attainment and income for young people working in the rural informal economy. It examined the effect of introducing a short term technical vocational training programme on the relationship between educational attainment and incomes. Lastly, the study investigated how the introduction of targeted short training affects income inequality among workers in the informal economy.The study, a secondary analysis, employed a descriptive relational correlation approach. The study reconfirmed the primary findings, that skills training led to significant increases in incomes for the population. However, the impact of the intervention was different across the different subpopulations. The increase in incomes was disproportionate, with a small proportion of young people realizing astronomical increases in incomes. The secondary analysis found that level of educational attainment as a variable is a poor predictor of income level. This remained true even after the skills training, suggesting that the human capital theory may not be highly applicable in a highly informal rural economy similar to Zimbabwe. Lastly, the intervention had a positive but negligible impact on reducing income inequalityC
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
Improving dietary and health data for decision-making in agriculture and nutrition actions in Africa
Full text linkChild malnutrition is one of the most used indicators for tracking progress towards attainment of Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG2) and the impacts of development interventions. Unfortunately, the current methods for collecting child nutrition indicators require considerable training, are slow and are expensive to collect data accurately. In this project, we developed and tested a mobile smartphone-based platform called Mbiotisho which means our health in Samburu, one of the local languages in Kenya), by which households can easily collect, submit, and access information on their and their children’s nutritional status in near-real time and at extremely low cost. Over the course of four years, we piloted and implemented the application in four locations
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
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