Digital Device Exposure and Cognition Levels of Children in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Cross-sectional Study in Cambodia

Background: Policy makers and practitioners in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are increasingly focusing on the effectiveness of digital devices in the delivery of medical and educational services to children under resource constraints. It is widely known that digital literacy can be fostered through exposure to and education regarding digital devices, which can improve children's academic performance as well as their search and communication skills in the digital era. However, the correlation between the cognitive function of children and exposure and intensity of the exposure to digital devices has rarely been studied, and the association between digital device exposure and the socioeconomic characteristics and cognitive development of children in LMICs is unknown. Objective: This study examines the association among exposure to digital devices, socioeconomic status, and cognitive function in children aged 3 to 9 years in Cambodia. Methods: We used a survey of 232 children that gathered data on familiarity with digital devices, demographic characteristics, and socioeconomic status, as well as a Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery test for cognitive function, to examine the association between possible barriers and factors that may influence the cognitive function of children in 2 Cambodian schools from April 22, 2019, to May 4, 2019. A comparative analysis was performed with and without digital exposure, and an association analysis was performed among the variables from the survey and cognitive function. Results: Significant differences were observed in demographic and socioeconomic characteristics such as school location, family type, and family income according to digital device exposure. The results of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery tests, except for 1 test related to executive function, indicated no significant differences (P>.05) between group A and group B or among the 4 subgroups. Pretest digital device experience and amount of time spent using digital devices during the test had no significant impacts on the cognitive development of the children. Conversely, the multivariate analyses showed that cognitive function was associated with educational expenses per child, school (location), family type, and family income. Conclusions: These results provide evidence to policy makers and practitioners on the importance of improving socioeconomic conditions, leading to investment in education by implementing programs for children's cognitive development through digital devices in LMICs.ope

An exploration of the use of theory and visualisation in behaviour change interventions to help healthcare staff prevent and control healthcare-associated infections.

Changing healthcare staff's behaviours is of paramount importance in improving infection prevention and control (IPC), and decreasing healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). Thus many supportive interventions have been developed in pertinent areas, such as hand hygiene (HH). The concepts of theory and visualisation in behaviour change research are well described and embraced across the social sciences as they provide rigorous and innovative interventional solutions. However, the use of each of these concepts within interventions in IPC and HAI-related research has not been systematically investigated, and neither has their use in combination. The current thesis thus aimed to explore this field in depth, with a view to developing evidence-based recommendations for designing behaviour change interventions combining theory and visualisation. The study comprises a sequential multimethod pragmatic inquiry. This commenced by conducting two separate integrative literature reviews, exploring the wider context of theory-based and visualisation-centred interventions respectively - both in the field of IPC and HAIs. The reviews addressed gaps in relation to the theories and visualisations that have been used in pertinent interventions, the structure and application of these, and which of them seem to work. However, they raised further questions, for example which intervention parts work better than others, and how and why parts or whole interventions work. The above questioning formed the basis for the conduct of a Delphi study, with a participating international panel of key experts (n=18) in the fields of IPC, HAIs, intervention development, theory and/or visualisation. Through three questionnaire and survey rounds, the expert panel provided insights into questions (round 1), and were asked to rank subsequent related statements according to the degree of their agreement (rounds 2 and 3). The experts' responses provided sets of theories and visualisations along with other important intervention elements (e.g. behaviour change techniques), which could be prioritised when considering combinations to use for developing focal interventions (i.e. targeted to specific behaviours of individuals or teams) and systems-based interventions (i.e. targeted to whole healthcare organisations). Finally, four focus groups - with nurses and infection control staff (n=18) from two Scottish Health Boards - aimed to obtain staff opinions and perspectives regarding IPC based on their clinical experiences. Participants were also presented with selected recommendations from the Delphi study, and were asked to comment on them and make further suggestions. Findings indicate that posters are less effective, and that work and time pressure as part of clinical practice should be considered when developing pertinent interventions. Taken together, it was possible to formulate a menu of recommendations that had their foundational basis in the combination of participatory theoretical approaches and dynamic forms of visualisation. This research provides novel insight into the role of theory and visualisation in HAIs and IPC practice. The explicit combination of theory and visualisation has been demonstrated to be very under-researched, thus these findings contribute original knowledge and offer value for practice, education and research

Special issue on climate-smart agriculture (CSA)

CSA strategies, policies, partnerships and investments; ‘CSA-Plan’: strategies to put CSA into practice; The mitigation pillar of CSA; Agricultural diversification as an adaptation strategy; Climate services and insurance: scaling; CSA Closing the gender gap in agriculture under climate change; How can the Data Revolution contribute to climate action?; Climate change and CSA in the current political climat

Can head teacher autonomy mitigate the effects of COVID-19 school closures in India?

This paper uses data from India to examine how school leaders have reacted to school closures due to COVID-19. We consider how differences in the decision-making autonomy of school leaders affect their confidence and coping strategies, and explore how this may help mitigate the otherwise unequalising effects of the pandemic

Big Data for Social Sciences: Measuring patterns of human behavior through large-scale mobile phone data

Through seven publications this dissertation shows how anonymized mobile phone data can contribute to the social good and provide insights into human behaviour on a large scale. The size of the datasets analysed ranges from 500 million to 300 billion phone records, covering millions of people. The key contributions are two-fold: 1. Big Data for Social Good: Through prediction algorithms the results show how mobile phone data can be useful to predict important socio-economic indicators, such as income, illiteracy and poverty in developing countries. Such knowledge can be used to identify where vulnerable groups in society are, reduce economic shocks and is a critical component for monitoring poverty rates over time. Further, the dissertation demonstrates how mobile phone data can be used to better understand human behaviour during large shocks in society, exemplified by an analysis of data from the terror attack in Norway and a natural disaster on the south-coast in Bangladesh. This work leads to an increased understanding of how information spreads, and how millions of people move around. The intention is to identify displaced people faster, cheaper and more accurately than existing survey-based methods. 2. Big Data for efficient marketing: Finally, the dissertation offers an insight into how anonymised mobile phone data can be used to map out large social networks, covering millions of people, to understand how products spread inside these networks. Results show that by including social patterns and machine learning techniques in a large-scale marketing experiment in Asia, the adoption rate is increased by 13 times compared to the approach used by experienced marketers. A data-driven and scientific approach to marketing, through more tailored campaigns, contributes to less irrelevant offers for the customers, and better cost efficiency for the companies.Comment: 166 pages, PHD thesi

Writing Around the Ancient Mediterranean

Writing in the ancient Mediterranean existed against a backdrop of very high levels of interaction and contact. In the societies around its shores, writing was a dynamic practice that could serve many purposes – from a tool used by elites to control resources and establish their power bases to a symbol of local identity and a means of conveying complex information and ideas. This volume presents a group of papers by members of the Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) research team and visiting fellows, offering a range of different perspectives and approaches to problems of writing in the ancient Mediterranean. They focus on practices, viewing writing as something that people do within a wider social and cultural context, and on adaptations, considering the ways in which writing changed and was changed by the people using it