An Assessment of the Nutritional Status of under Five Children in Four Districts in the Central Region of Ghana

The study determined the nutritional status of under five children in Komenda Edina EguafoAbirem (KEEA) districts in Central region, Ghana. Weight and height measurements for 120 children selected from 4 clusters were taken and survey data collected by structured questionnaire from mothers of the selected children. Prevalence of underweight/severely underweight stunting/severely stunted and wasting/severely wasted was 13.3%, 34.2% and 10.8% respectively. Results also indicated that stunting, wasting and underweight were more prevalent in girls than in boys and in children aged >2 - 5 years than those <2 years. Wasting only occurred in a small percentage of the boys and girls, and children <2 years.Survey revealed that there is a significant association between nutritional status of children and mothers’ age, education, nutrition knowledge and feeding practices. Wald statistics and confidence intervals after adjusting for mother’s age, education, occupation, father’s occupation and feeding practices showed mothers nutrition knowledge, feeding practices and mothers’ education as predictors of children nutrition status.Curbing teenage pregnancy, encouraging girls to pursue education, developing and implementing a comprehensive nutrition education programme for mothers with emphasis on providing quality nutritious and adequate food to children is highly recommended

Assessing the quality of services at an academic library

Customers usually have high expectations on the services they receive. The LibQUAL model was employed in this study to investigate the quality of services at an academic library. The participants were chosen from the five colleges in a university using simple random sampling. Two hundred participants were chosen from each college. In all, 1000 participants (including faculty members, postgraduate and undergraduate students) were selected for the study. The study revealed that users knew and used the library's services. The researchers delivered the questionnaires to the respondents at the library. The results showed that the library service quality (LSQ) fell short of users' expectations. There was a statistically significant difference in LSQ between gender of users. The users' expectations of the library's level of service were out of sync or mismatch. The variations could be attributed to differences in information needs of users. This requires the library to assess its services from users' perspective regularly. The use of the LibQUAL model provides useful information that library management can employ for developing service quality measurement scale and planning for service quality. The study also provides information about services that needs improvement, so that library staff could manage users' expectations and satisfaction in a better way. University authorities expect good return of investment made into the development of the library. Therefore, libraries should improve upon their services to boost the image of the Universities