The Use of True-Random, Quasi-Random, and Nonrandom Sampling Techniques in in Educational Studies

The most commonly used sampling techniques in research are probability and nonprobability methods. While probability sampling is based on the principle of random selection of participants in a particular study, non-random selection is the basis of probability sampling. The random and non-random classifications appear to have some potential flaws and are insufficient to represent all sampling procedures involving human participants. Similarly, most authors believe that they use random sampling techniques, although in reality, they do not use true random sampling. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to highlight that sampling techniques can be characterized as true-random, quasi-random, or nonrandom, rather than merely random and nonrandom. Attempts have been made to show how inadequate random and non-random sampling methods are, the characteristics of true-random, quasi-random, and nonrandom sampling procedures, and when each sampling procedure is appropriate. Since each unit of the population is randomly selected and the chance of selecting the unit is equal, a real random sample is used to estimate the characteristics of the population directly from the sample. With quasi-random sampling, it is not possible to directly estimate population characteristics, but only indirectly. However, population characteristics cannot be directly or indirectly estimated by using non-random sampling techniques. Keywords: True-random; quasi-random; non-random; sampling techniques DOI: 10.7176/CEIS/14-1-03 Publication date: January 31st 202

Arbitrability of Administrative Contracts Under Ethiopian Legal System: Critical Appraisal

Disputes or differences between or claims of the parties which may arise from certain legal relationship could be settled outside of ordinary courts through the mechanism called alternative or amicable dispute resolution mechanisms, alternative to the litigation. These extra-judicial mechanisms of resolving disputes or differences or claims of the parties, inter alia, are negotiation, mediation and arbitration. The first two are essentially negotiation mechanisms and the third one is decisional mechanism where parties’ appointed judges or experts give decision on the point on which parties are at issue based on the principles of the law. The point of worth consideration is to wonder if all matters are capable of settlement by arbitration. Based on county’s public policy consideration, some matters are arbitrable whereas other matters are in arbitrable. The objective of this paper is to analyze whether disputes emanating from administrative contracts are capable of settlement by arbitration or otherwise in Ethiopia under the relevant laws and to survey what the practice looks like in relation to the same. Thus, doctrinal legal research methodology is employed to attain the objective. The findings of the study reveal that there is no uniform practice as to arbitrability of administrative contracts in Ethiopia and there is also no administrative procedure legislation that addresses the problem at hand. Keywords: arbitrability Administrative contracts   Alternative Dispute Resolution DOI: 10.7176/JLPG/105-02 Publication date: January 31st 202

The Applications of APA styles in African Academic publications: An Evidence from Bahir Dar Journal of Education

Having skimmed through recently published articles of Bahir Journal of Education (BJE), I inadvertently engrossed with a few imperfections that are incompatible with a currently in use publication manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) style. Notwithstanding strong efforts have been made to produce high-quality articles in terms of contents, methodological approaches and scientific credibility, the oversights of very technical details of specific APA style and formatting have been found. From professional points of views, these oversights might certainly affect the quality of the journal. The main objective of this paper is to uncover the frequent errors that overlooked within the articles since 2014, and thereby to conquer the errors using sixth edition publication manual of the APA and up-to-date manuscripts that are available at the http://apastyle.apa.org/. I presented a series of errors observed in seven randomly selected articles regarding the titles, abstracts, citations, methods, statistical presentations and lists of reference entries to take viable measures that tackle the errors virtually. Finally, based on the observed mismatches, I forwarded implications for the quick use of publication manual of APA that could support the authors, the reviewers and the examiners of the journal articles. Keywords: BJE; APA styles; publication manual; oversights; frequent errors DOI: 10.7176/IKM/9-2-0

Dissecting the genetic bases of severe malaria resistance using genome-wide and post genomewide study approaches

P. falciparum malaria remains one of the leading public health problems worldwide. The global tally of malaria in 2018 was estimated at 228 million cases and 405, 000 deaths worldwide. African countries disproportionately carry the global burden of malaria accounting for 93% and 94% of cases and deaths, respectively. Even though most infected children recover from P. falciparum malaria, a small subset (~1%) of cases progresses to severe disease and death. Over the last decade, several genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have been conducted in diverse malaria endemic populations to understand the natural host protective immunity against severe malaria that can provide clues for the development of new vaccines and therapeutics. However, beyond identifying association variants, conventional GWAS approaches can't inform the underpinning biological functions. To bridge this gap, we applied various contemporary statistical genetic analytic approaches to malaria GWAS datasets of diverse malaria endemic populations. First, we accessed malaria resistance GWAS datasets of three African populations (N=~11,000) including Kenya, Gambia and Malawi from European Genome Phenome Archive (EGA) through MalariaGEN consortium standard data accession procedures. We explored the challenges of GWAS approaches in the genetically diverse Africa populations and figured out how various advanced statistical genetic methods can be implemented to address these challenges. We investigated single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) heritability (h2 g) of malaria resistance in the Gambian populations and determined appropriate quality (QC) thresholds to accurately estimate the h2 g in our dataset. Second, we estimated h2 g in the three populations and partitioned the h2 g into chromosomes, allele frequencies and annotations using the genetic relationship-matrix restricted maximum likelihood approaches. We further created African specific reference panel from African population datasets obtained from 1000 Genomes Project and African Genome Variation Project dataset and computed linkage disequilibrium (LD). We used LD information obtained from these reference panels to compute cell-type specific and none cell-type specific enrichments for GWAS-summary statistics meta-analyzed across the three populations. Our results showed for the first time that malaria resistance is polygenic trait with h2 g of ~20% and that the causal variants are overrepresented around protein coding regions of the genome. We further showed that the h2 g is disproportionately concentrated on three chromosomes (chr 5, 11 and 20), suggesting cost-effectiveness of targeting these chromosomes in future malaria genomic sequencing studies. Third, we systematically predicted plausible candidate genes and pathways from functional analysis of severe malaria resistance GWAS summary statistics (N = 17,000) meta-analyzed across eleven populations in malaria endemic regions in Africa, Asia and Oceania. We applied positional mapping, expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL), chromatin interaction mapping and gene-based association analyses to identify candidate severe malaria resistance genes. We performed network and pathway analyses to investigate their shared biological functions. We further applied rare variant analysis to raw GWAS datasets of three malaria endemic populations including Kenya, Malawi and Gambia and performed various population genetic structures of the identified genes in the three endemic populations and 20 world-wide ethnics. Our functional mapping analysis identified 57 genes located in the known malaria genomic loci while our gene-based GWAS analysis identified additional 125 genes across the genome. The identified genes were significantly enriched in malaria pathogenic pathways including multiple overlapping pathways in erythrocyte-related functions, blood coagulations, ion channels, adhesion molecules, membrane signaling elements and neuronal systems. Furthermore, our population genetic analysis revealed that the minor allele frequencies (MAF) of the SNPs residing in the identified genes are generally higher in the three malaria endemic populations compared to global populations. Overall, our results suggest that severe malaria resistance trait is attributed to multiple genes that are enriched in pathways linked to severe malaria pathogenesis. This highlights the possibility of harnessing new malaria therapeutics that can simultaneously target multiple malaria protective host molecular pathways. In conclusions, this project showed that malaria resistance trait is mainly a polygenic trait which is influenced by genes and pathways linked to blood stage lifecycle of P. falciparum. These findings constitute the foundations for future experimental studies that can potentially lead to translational medicine including development of new vaccines and therapeutics. However, ‘-omics' studies including those implemented in this study, are limited to single datatype analysis and lack adequate power to explain the complexity of molecular processes and usually lead to identification of correlations than causations. Thus, beyond singe locus analysis, the future direction of malaria resistance requires a paradigm shift from single-omics to multi-stage and multi-dimensional integrative multi-omics studies that combines multiple data types from the human host, the parasite, and the environment. The current biotechnological and statistical advances may eventually lead to the feasibility of systems biology studies and revolutionize malaria research

Agronomic Traits of Trifolium Species in Different Agroecologies of Benishangul-Gumuz Region

AbstractA study was conducted to evaluate Trifolium species for their agronomic traits intwo agro-ecologies of Benishangul-Gumuz region, North Western Ethiopia. Theexperiment was carried out at Tongo, Assosa, and Kamash forage researchstations of Assosa Agricultural Research Center, which were purposively selectedto represent highland, mid and lowland agro-ecologies respectively. FiveTrifolium genotypes (T. steudeneri 9720, T. decorum 9447, T. quantinum 6301, T.tembense 7102, and T. steudeneri 9712) were evaluated in a randomized completeblock design with three replications. Plant height at forage harvesting, forage drymatter yield and leaf to stem ratio were significantly (P < 0.001) affected byenvironment (E) and G x E (G and E interaction). The highest mean forage drymatter yield was recorded at Kamash, than Assosa and Tongo. The result ofcombined analysis indicated that, genotype (G) had significant (P < 0.001) effecton forage dry matter yield and T. quantinum 6301 genotype was the best yielderamong the genotypes evaluated. Total dry matter yield was significantly different(P < 0.001) among genotypes at Tongo and Assosa. Generally, based on foragedry matter yield data, T. quantinum 6301 was well performed at Assosa andTongo than other genotypes, T. steudenary 9720 was relatively better adapted atKamash, and they are recommended as an alternative legume forage crops for therespective locations

CAUSES AND PSYCHOSOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE IN AMBO TOWN MARRIED WOMEN

Intimate partner violence is a pattern of coercive tactics that can include physical, psychological, sexual, economic, and emotional abuses against intimate partners, with the goal of establishing and maintaining power and control. The aim of this study is to investigate intimate partner violence and associated factors in Ambo town. The participants of the study were household women between the age15 to 49. Data were collected by using both quantitative and qualitative methods. To collect the quantitative data, 389 household women of Ambo Town were randomly selected for closeended questionnaire. In qualitative method , 12 participants (six women were victims of IPV and six other married women) were purposely selected for semi structured and 10 key informants were also purposely selected for Focus group discussion. The data collected from the questionnaires were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistical tools through SPSS.20 and the qualitative data was analyzed narratively. The results of the study demonstrated that from the total 389 sample, 343 women did not agree with their husband and only 46 women reported that they agree with their husband. This shows that there was a problem of disagreement between wives and their husbands. Besides, causes and psychosocial consequences of IPV were directly related with intimate partner violence

“Analisis Pengaruh Budaya Kerja dan Kompetensi Terhadap Employee Engagement dengan Kepuasan Kerja sebagai Variabel Intervening” (Studi Kasus di Universitas Katolik Darma Cendika Surabaya)

Budaya kerja mempunyai pengaruh yang dominan dalam menciptakan kesuksesan suatu perusahaan atau organisasi. Selain budaya kerja, faktor lain yang mendukung kesuksesan dalam suatu organisasi adalah kompetensi sumber daya manusia yang ada. Perusahaan dikatakan berkualitas dan berhasil jika karyawannya mempunyai kemampuan dalam menyelesaikan tugas dan tanggung jawabnya sehingga menghasilkan output yang berkualitas. Karyawan yang merasa puas dengan hasil pekerjaannya maka akan muncul sikap keterikatan karyawan terhadap perusahaan. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui pengaruh langsung dan tidak langsung antara budaya kerja dan kompetensi melalui kepuasan kerja terhadap employee engagament. Populasi dalam penelitian ini adalah seluruh karyawan (dosen dan karyawan) di Universitas Katolik Darma Cendika Surabaya yang berjumlah 52 karyawan. Teknik pengambilan sample menggunakan teknik sampel sampling jenuh. Teknik analisa yang digunakan adalah Path Analysis. Hasil pengujian memperlihatkan bahwa buday kerja dapat berpengaruh secara langsung maupun tidak langsung dengan melalui kepuasan kerja terhadap employee engagement di Unika Darma Cendika Surabaya. Sedangkan variabel kompetensi tidak dapat berpengaruh secara langsung terhadap employee engagement, namun variabel ini dapat berpengaruh tidak langsung terhadap employee engagement dengan melalui kepuasan kerja. Kata kunci : Budaya kerja, Kompetensi, employee engagement dan kepuasan kerj

Public participation in constitution-making: a critical assessment of the Kenyan experience

Magister Legum - LL