Pre and Post Covid-19 Travel Intentions and Perceptions of the Travelers of Bangladesh

The whole world is going through a challenging period of time due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19). In Bangladesh, the Tourism industry was one of the booming industries until the pandemic spread with its curse. The novel coronavirus is causing plenty of negative effects on Bangladesh’s travel and tourism industry. The future of the travel and tourism industry may get hampered due to the Covid-19 pandemic as the virus spreads vastly and seems a risk for many travelers. Tourists travel related decision and behavior depends on the overall situation around them. But how the travelers of Bangladesh are responding to the recent pandemic situation and how their travel intentions and perceptions vary is still unknown. It is essential to know tourist perception regarding Covid-19 and how it affects their travel intention. This research aims to initiate an in-depth understanding of the travel intention and perceptions of the travelers of Bangladesh. Specifically, it will attempt to find the travel pattern of travelers in Bangladesh during the Covid-19 pandemic. In particular, it will try to fill the gap by identifying tourists’ perceptions regarding traveling in the Covid-19 period. In order to fulfill the research objectives, a quantitative research method has been used by the author. The study utilized a self-administered, close-ended questionnaire to get responses from the participants. The sample of the study has collected by following the non-probability convenience sampling method. The research has found that the travel intention and perception of the travelers of Bangladesh varies in a wide range from pre Covid-19 period to post Covid-19 period according to tourist demographic profile and the fear of Covid-19 influences the tourist perception negatively due to its health risk. The study also pointed out that, a large number of tourists, who are frequent travelers in nature before Covid-19 took place, are largely influenced by the pandemic, and due to health risks, they are supposed to avoid traveling and become more concerned about ensuring personal hygiene and maintaining more social distance. According to the study findings and the sampled respondents' opinions author tries to point out some strategies that might be helpful for tourism practitioners to mitigate the loss of the tourism and hospitality industry in Bangladesh. Keywords: Covid-19, Pandemic, Tourists’ perceptions, Crisis, Travel intentions, Travel restrictions, Risk, Tourism impact DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/15-14-04 Publication date:July 31st 202

Knowledge and public health practices during lockdown towards COVID-19 in Bangladesh

The study aimed to assess the role of having knowledge and essential hygiene practices to prevent coronavirus pandemic and to find out the relationship between people’s knowledge and good hygiene practices with socio-demographic variables during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic situation. In this study, data were collected from 248 respondents for cross-sectional study using voluntary response sampling from April, 30 2020 to May, 30 2020, during lockdown situation in Bangladesh. Descriptive statistics were done to calculate the frequencies and percentages by using Stata SE 14.2 (StataCorp). Chi-square was performed at the significance level of 5% to find the factors which were associated with knowledge about COVID-19. After knowing about COVID-19, 86.29% respondents had taken preventive measures and 71.37% respondents had agreed to stay at home. Among the respondents, 47.98% were involved in services and were positively associated with good general knowledge of preventive practices. Our present findings indicated significant relationship between good general knowledge and practice of general people towards COVID-19 outbreak in Bangladesh. The findings of the study are helpful for the researchers and the population to follow all good promotional practices for preventive measures against coronavirus

The development of an intervention package to prevent children under five years old drowning in rural Bangladesh

Aim: There are an estimated 372 000 worldwide deaths by drowning every year, and it has been described as a secret epidemic in Bangladesh. The aim of this study was to develop an intervention package to prevent children under the age of five from drowning in rural Bangladesh. Methods: This was a qualitative study using focus group discussions in three villages in rural Bangladesh. The 45 participants were mothers and fathers with children under five, the parents of children who had drowned and community leaders. Results: The majority of the participants (71%) were male. The focus groups revealed that most drowning's occurred between 11am and 2pm and that risk factors included the following: children not being able to swim, ditches that were not filled in, lack of medical facilities, parents who were not aware of childhood drowning and lack of information through the media about how to prevent of childhood drowning. Suggestions included using a mobile-based short messaging service or voice calls to parents, especially mothers, could increase awareness and reduce the risk of childhood drowning. Conclusion: A safety education programme could be effective in increasing knowledge and changing attitudes, which could prevent drowning among children in Bangladesh

Counselling experiences among men having sex with men and living with HIV in Malaysia

Purpose in Malaysia, the trend of HIV transmission has shifted from intravenous drug use to sexual intercourse, and men who have sex with men (MSM) have become the main driver due to high-risk sexual behaviour. Thus, treatment and care, which also involves counselling, for men who have sex with men and who are living with HIV (MSM living with HIV) are crucial. This study aims to explore the experiences of MSM living with HIV and participating in counselling session during treatment and care at two public hospitals. Method: This qualitative study with a grounded-theory approach was conducted at two public hospitals in Malaysia. Five participants who were MSM living with HIV were selected through purposive sampling. They participated in semi-structured interviews, non-participant observations, and diary entries, each of which was conducted three times. The data were analysed using grounded theory with N-Vivo 8 to determine themes. Result: The participants were found to experience feelings of emptiness and hopelessness because of their unreadiness to accept their HIV status. These feelings made their participation in counselling sessions challenging. Consequently, the participants found counselling sessions unhelpful due to their unwillingness to participate in the counselling relationship. Conclusion: The findings of the study highlight the need for counselling sessions to focus more on feelings related to unreadiness to improve the self-esteem and ability to create positive relationships with others of MSM living with HIV. It is also important to strengthen the training and skills among HIV counsellors to enhance counselling services for these men

Learning experience on career planning for community colleges in Malaysia

This study explored a learning experience in technical and vocational curriculum based on a career planning program. The aspect of career has always been ignored in the community college curriculum as it was considered less important in the education of students. Many studies showed that exposure to career since the early days of schooling are very effective in shaping the career maturity of students. This study has been conducted based on Backward Design curriculum model which used learning outcomes (graduation) as a tool to create a learning experience in the curriculum. This qualitative study was conducted on 15 respondents graduated from community college and are successful in their careers with a high income. Data was collected using Delphi techniques interview and each session had been transcribed. Thematic analysis has been conducted in 1st round Delphi techniques interview and Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM) analysis has been used in second round of the Delphi Techniques. Findings indicate that there are three items learning experiences for pre-self-employment information (interests, self-efficacy, and intrinsic motivation) and four items of learning experiences for pre-employment career that influence the career planning. The item has been ranking base on priority for each items value of threshold (d) in FDM. Finally, in the conclusions and recommendations sectors the data identified by the research are described in detail and analyzed so that to ensure that the chain relationship of market research > curriculum design > vocational education and training will be effective and successful

Adoption Trend of Climate-Resilient Rice Varieties in Bangladesh

Rice is a major crop in Bangladesh that supports both food security and livelihoods. However, a need remains for improved productivity and adaptation to the risks associated with climate change. To accomplish this, the increased adoption of climate-resilient and high-yielding rice varieties can be beneficial. Therefore, we conducted a study in Bangladesh over three consecutive years: 2016, 2017, and 2018. The scope of the study included the major cropping season (wet), Aman. The yield advantages of climate-resilient rice varieties were evaluated and compared with those of the varieties popular with farmers. We included new stress-tolerant varieties, such as submergencetolerant rice (BRRI dhan51 and BRRI dhan52) and drought-tolerant rice (BRRI dhan56 and BRRI dhan71), along with farmer-chosen controls, in the study. We conducted the evaluation through on-farm trials to compare the varieties in both submergence- and drought-affected environments. The seasonal trials provided measured results of yield advantages. The participating farmers were also studied over the three-year-period to capture their varietal adoption rates. We calculated both the location estimated yield advantages (LEYA) and the location observed yield advantages (LOYA). The results revealed that, under non-stress conditions, the grain yields of climate-resilient varieties were either statistically similar to or higher than those of the farmer-chosen controls. Our study also revealed a year-to-year progressive adoption rate for the introduced varieties. The study suggests that the widescale introduction and popularization of climate-resilient varieties can ensure higher productivity and climate risk adaptation. The close similarity between LOYA and LEYA indicated that the observational and experiential conclusions of the host farmers were similar to the scientific performance of the varieties. We also found that comparison performed through on-farm trials was a critical method for enhancing experiential learning and obtaining an accurate estimation of yield advantages

A Novel Approach of Network Intrusion Detection using Deep Learning

Protecting computer systems and network against various types of attacks by malicious individual or system has become a vital challenge in recent time. Most or almost all the organizations/agencies maintain their regulatory and day-to-day activities using a connected intranet or internet and hence it becomes vital job to detect security breaches inside the organization’s network. An intelligent network intrusion detection system (NIDS) might play prominent role in surveillance for any possible attacks to the network infrastructures. Various Machine Learning techniques such as Neural Network, SVM, Naïve-Bayes (NB), Random Forests (RF), Decision Tree (DT) and many others already have been used to develop an NIDS. Many of these ML techniques show good prediction accuracy on known attacks, but demonstrate week response on new attacks. Deep Learning (DL) a new branch of Machine Learning has been emerged to show good out-of-sample accuracy since it can automatically learn the features well devising a multi-layered high dimensional space. There are very few works have done in security and in Intrusion detection using Deep Learning. In this work, I have built a novel system leveraging the various Deep Learning techniques such as Deep Autoencoder, Restricted Boltzman Machines and Deep Belief Network for detecting most of the possible attacks in a network infrastructure. This system can also find network attributes which mostly correlate or responsible for a new or old attack with ensuring very good predictive accuracy

Effectiveness of mobile short messaging services to improve parents’ knowledge, attitude and practices on drowning prevention in Charghat Upazila, Bangladesh

Introduction: Drowning contributes to injury and early death in many countries. Over 50% of global drowning deaths occur among children aged under 15 years old with children aged between 1 and 4 years of age being most at risk. Drowning is the third leading cause of death for children aged 0–4 years in many Asian countries, and is a serious but neglected health problem in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) like Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, drowning rates are 10 to 20 times more than those in other developed countries. The aim of the qualitative part of this study was to develop a mobile SMS (short messaging services) intervention to prevent children from drowning, while the quantitative part was to test the effectiveness of a mobile SMS intervention to improve the knowledge, attitude, and practices of parents of children aged under five concerning the prevention of drowning. Method: A mixed method was used. Qualitative part: Design: focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted. Setting: a rural community in Bangladesh. Participants: Four FGDs were conducted with mothers and fathers of children aged under five years, and two group local community leaders. One FGD was conducted for each group. Out of 45 participants, 13 were women. Three in-depth interviews (IDIs) were conducted with parents who had children who had drowned, of which two were female. Quantitative part: Design: a cluster randomized community trial with 788 parents of children aged under five in a rural community of Bangladesh. Intervention: Mobile SMS intervention for parents of children under five years concerning the prevention of drowning. Outcome: differences in knowledge, attitude and practices of parents concerning the prevention of drowning between the baseline and immediate follow-up after the intervention, and after three months. Results: A total of 45 respondents participated in the qualitative part of this study, of which 32 (71.1%) were male, and 13 (28.8%) were female. The risk factors for drowning included the time (11:00am-2:00pm), gender, especially male, lack of swimming ability, parents who were not aware about childhood drowning, unwanted ditches that were not filled in, lack of medical facilities, and lack of information through mass media for the prevention of childhood drowning. There was a significant improvement in knowledge in the intervention group compared to the control group at different time points [baseline: F(1, 787) = 0.33, ρ-value = 0.56; immediately after intervention: F(1, 772) = 2989.25, ρ-value = 0.001; 3-months after intervention F(1, 761) = 4591.33, ρ-value = 0.001]. Similarly, there was an improvement in the positive attitude and good practices of parents on prevention of drowning. There were significant main effect for group [F(1, 379) = 5084.81, ρ-value = 0.001], time [F(1, 379) = 5786.11, ρ-value = 0.001], and group and time interaction [F(1, 331) = 2425.33, ρ-value = 0.001] in terms of the drowning prevention knowledge of parents. Similarly, the main effects for group, time, and group and time interaction for drowning prevention attitude and drowning prevention practices of parents were also significant. Conclusion: The mobile based SMS intervention developed was effective in improving the knowledge, attitude, and practices of parents of children aged under five concerning drowning prevention in a rural community of Bangladesh

Attributes of a good website from a customer service perspective

A website is an invaluable business tool for both companies and their customers.Websites enables organizations to make as much information available to customers as we think is needed. Having a good website is not only a decisive step into the future, but a necessary move to stay competitive in this fast paced world. The purpose of this thesis is to provide deeper understanding of how to create a positive web experience for customers. In order to reach this purpose, research questions focusing on the website functionality as well as website effectiveness were focused on. Using the research questions as a guide, a literature review was conducted, landing in a conceptual framework that could be empirically tested. To collect this data, a qualitative case study approach was utilized with two case studies focusing on the customer’s web experiences on two commercial websites in Bangladesh. Interview and direct observation were used to collect the data. The findings of the study indicate that the attributes of websites and how positively they are perceived, as well as certain factors of website effectiveness, can create a positive web experience for customer.Validerat; 20101217 (root