1,721,082 research outputs found
MalawiFoodSystems_Discrete_choice_experiment
No full textThe discrete choice experiment (DCE) was undertaken in rural areas of two districts of Malawi, Lilongwe District in Central Malawi and Phalombe District in Southern Malawi - specifically, from four enumeration areas in one 'traditional authority' area in each of Lilongwe District and Phalombe District. Data were collected from 400 households (200 in each district) in February/March 2018 representing the lean season (usually October to March) with maize prices expected to be high.
The DCE was undertaken to understand how food choices would respond to a change in the price of maize. It is designed so that we can look at how much people will change their diets based on different maize price scenarios (and to what food types – e.g., to another starch product such as rice, to a vegetable such as cabbage, to more protein-rich foods such as the dried fish, or to an unhealthy soft drink) – and how sensitive people are to price.
It consists of ten randomly selected scenarios. Each scenario contained THREE baskets. The preference attributes indicated by food types in each basket were maize, and a maximum of rice, a cabbage, dried fish, and a bottle of the soda ‘Frozy’ (an unhealthy product). The assumption we made based on the data collection undertaken prior to the design of the DCE is that people commonly buy maize (the staple food of most Malawians) – and less commonly purchase the other food types. Rice was chosen as a substitute for maize. Small dried fish were chosen to represent a high-protein food more common in this setting where an alternate food like meat is rarely consumed. Cabbage is chosen to represent a less-commonly consumed vegetable. The soft drink was chosen to represent an unhealthy item that is part of the nutrition transition associated with diets composed of higher proportion of sugars, fats, and saturated fats.
We used a d-error-minimising efficient design to generate two sets of five DCE tasks, using a modified Federov algorithm in NGENE software. One set of five tasks had maize at a high price (400 MK/kg), and the other had maize at a low price (; 100 MK/kg), associated with prices in the lean (February/March) and harvest seasons (May). The study estimated that on average, a household consumed food products valued at MK1000.00 (US$1.40) each 2-3 days, which informed the set value of each food basket. Thus, as each basket costs between MK900 and MK1100, the quantity of non-maize products in the baskets varies.
We displayed 3 hypothetical baskets in each task using an unlabelled design where each alternative represents a comparable basket. In addition, participants could opt-out of choosing a basket; if they did so, a forced choice task from the three baskets was asked immediately afterwards to assess differences between conditional and unconditional demand
MalawiFoodSystems_Focus_group_discussions
No full textThe focus group discussions (FGDs) were undertaken in rural areas of two districts of Malawi, Lilongwe District in Central Malawi and Phalombe District in Southern Malawi - specifically, in one 'traditional authority' area in each of Lilongwe District and Phalombe District. In each district, we received permission from traditional heads (chiefs or village heads) to undertake focus group discussions. The traditional heads organized for a group of adults of different ages (18 years and over) in the villages to attend the FGDs. Sixteen FGDs of 8-12 adults were undertaken – two groups for male participants and two groups for female participants, in each of the two districts and at each time point. Data were collected at two time points – May 2017, representing a post-harvest season when maize prices are expected to be low, and February/March 2018 representing a lean season (usually October to March) with maize prices expected to be high.
The interview guides for the FGDs were informed by the Policy Triangle framework for understanding policy processes, and domains of the Shiffman and Smith framework for analysing political prioritisation. They covered six key domains: participant roles/occupations; views of FISP; how FISP policy is made; key actors involved with FISP; nutrition as an issue in FISP; and wider political, economic and social context for FISP
MalawiFoodSystems_Household_and_individual surveys
No full textThe household and individual surveys were undertaken in rural areas of two districts of Malawi, Lilongwe District in Central Malawi and Phalombe District in Southern Malawi - specifically, from four enumeration areas in one 'traditional authority' area in each of Lilongwe District and Phalombe District. Data were collected from 400 households (200 in each district), at two time points – May 2017, representing a post-harvest season when maize prices are expected to be low, and February/March 2018 representing a lean season (usually October to March) with maize prices expected to be high.
The household survey included questions about: demographics and household characteristics, including questions regarding household assets based on the Demographic and Health Surveys (USAID); agricultural activities undertaken by the household; food and non-food expenditure; food obtained from non-purchased sources; food security; and a dietary assessment of household dietary diversity.
The individual survey included a dietary assessment of individual dietary diversity
MalawiFoodSystems_Key_informant_interviews
No full textThe key informant interviews (24 in total) were undertaken over a three-month period between 2017 and 2019 with participants from key stakeholder groups in Malawi with an interest in population nutrition and related health, or in agriculture: national policymakers from Ministry of Health and Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development (6 interviews with 7 individuals); district-council respondents from Lilongwe and Phalombe Districts (7 interviews); local non-state actors (5 interviews); and village chiefs in Lilongwe and Phalombe Districts (6 interviews). We recruited individuals for interview from within the organisations of interest based on prior contacts or from approaching the organisation and asking to speak to someone best placed to discuss the issues.
The interview guides for the semi-structured interviews and FGDs were informed by the Policy Triangle framework for understanding policy processes, and domains of the Shiffman and Smith framework for analysing political prioritisation, and covered questions relating to participants’ view of the FISP and its aims, how FISP policy is made, key actors and stakeholders involved with the FISP and their role and influence, the impact of the FISP on nutrition, and the wider context for the FISP including political, economic and social context.
MalawiFoodSystems_Food_market_survey
No full textThe food market surveys undertaken in rural areas of two districts of Malawi, Lilongwe District in Central Malawi and Phalombe District in Southern Malawi - specifically the food market surveys were conducted in two food markets commonly accessed by local people in a 'traditional authority' area in each of Lilongwe District and Phalombe District. These surveys were conducted at two time points - May 2017, representing a post-harvest season when maize prices are expected to be low, and February/March 2018 representing a lean season (usually October to March) with maize prices expected to be high.
The survey collected the price of all food items reported to have been consumed by respondents in the household and individual surveys (refer to this file in the project Dataverse for more information), in the quantities in which people commonly purchase the particular food (kilograms, litres, ‘pieces’, and a standardized ‘small cup’ (600 mL) and ‘large cup’ (1500mL)
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
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
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