Problems in using the wireless village services in Malaysia: the non-users perspectives

This study aims to identify problems faced by rural community in Malaysia in using the wireless village services. The study is quantitative in nature and was conducted in four districts in Malaysia, namely Setiawan (Perak), Bahau (Negeri Sembilan), Marang (Terengganu) and Kundasang (Sabah). With a total of 300 respondents the study used a survey method to identify the problems faced by an ICT project called 1Malaysia Wireless Village. Analysis performed has confirmed on four main problems that were possibly affected the progress of rural development and digital equality towards economic development. A number of discussions have been highlighted and it is a hope that it can assist the concern parties in constructing the best ICT usage strategies particularly among the rural community

A qualitative study on ageing related anxiety among middle aged women in Malaysia

Ageing anxiety is commoner among women compared to men. However, little is known on the possible contributing factors towards the development of ageing related anxiety among Malaysian women. This study aimed to explore ageing anxiety among the middle-aged women in Malaysia in facing the ageing process. Series of 6 focus group discussions (FGD) were conducted involving a total of 36 women aged between 35 and 59 years old. Each FGD consisted of 5 to 7 respondents and was conducted for an average of 1 to 2 hours. The respondents were selected using the maximum variation sampling method focussing on five age categories, between 35 to 39, 40 to 44, 45 to 49, 50 to 54 and 55 to 59 years old. Representative from several residential areas in the area of Putrajaya Federal Territory and Seri Kembangan, Selangor were involved in the selection of respondents. The interviews revealed that, majority of the respondents were seriously thinking of the possible negative experiences associated with ageing and being old, but very few experiencing ageing anxiety. Three main themes that were identified to contribute to the ageing anxiety were issues related to caregiving at old age and fear of loneliness, the welfare and care of their children when they are old and eventually die and also physical changes that occurred with ageing process. These themes were not specifically associated with any particular age groups, marital or income status. However, the development of the ageing anxiety was found to be related to their personal experiences and observations from the surrounding community. The findings show that women in Malaysia are still emphasizing on the importance of traditional caregiving system, where elderly parents are looked after by the children or extended family members rather than living in formal institutions. Despite the important role of formal institutions in the care of elderly people in the future, it is still negatively perceived. With the shrinking of the size of nuclear family and massive involvement of women in employment sector, more elderly will be expected to reside in formal institutions in the near future. Relevant authorities should be made aware on the importance to maintain the quality of care in the formal institution for elderly, in order to tackle the negative perceptions

Enhancing the sense of togetherness among youth via Facebook: a case study on 1Malaysia Wireless Village Project

This paper explores some topics related to enhancing the sense of togetherness among youth within a virtual community. With the wider use of the Internet among the rural youth in Malaysia, rural communities are more exposed to global connection. The 1Malaysia Wireless Village Project has taken this many steps forward. The Internet has occupied social media of all kinds, and social media are widely accessed among rural youths. Rural youths occupy themselves within the social space of Facebook in a way that suggests that they find its functions useful for staying connected with friends near and far. Primary analysis has found that use of Facebook functions creates not only a social bond and support but also builds a social channel for obtaining and sharing current issues among virtual group members. The frequent use of its specific functions such as conversation, sharing, identity, reputation and group were found to have significant correlation with users' sense of togetherness. However, it was identified that the frequent use of the group function contributed the most to enhancing the perceived sense of togetherness among the virtual community members

How cohesive are you in virtual communities?

Although a cohesive society is difficult to maintain, social cohesion is seen as ideal to unite a heterogeneous community. Studies in the past have focused on social cohesion within real life context involving face-to-face encounters, nowadays it was noted that social networking sites (SNS) have a role in determining the level of social cohesion. This study aims to examine the role of SNS in determining the level of social cohesiveness among its virtual youth communities’ members. A total of 600 multiethnic youths in urban and rural areas in Malaysia were selected based on a multi-stage cluster sampling technique. The respondents were asked to state their level of agreement on sense of togetherness, sense of belonging, social trust, and social interaction through a distributed self-administered questionnaire. The results showed that the overall level of social cohesion among virtual youth communities was only moderate and the dimension sense of belonging yielded the highest score. This study implied that SNS are capable of enhancing the level of social cohesion among youths in Malaysia

Potential benefits of the wireless village programme in Malaysia for rural communities

The main attempt of this study is to identify the potential benefits of Malaysia Wireless Village programme to rural communities in Malaysia. This is a conceptual study in which reviews of the literature and document analyses have been performed to reveal the potential benefits offered by the Wireless Village programme. A total of six potential benefits have been identified and discussed by the authors. It is hoped that such discussions will assist concerned parties in constructing concrete strategies for improving ICT usage among rural communities in Malaysia

Well-being among social entrepreneurs in Malaysia: a theoretical domains framework

The term Social Entrepreneurship (SE) is not new in Malaysia but not many studies were done on this community, especially on their subjective well-being. This term has long been debated among scholars because it is a fast-growing phenomenon among both academics and practitioners in the area. SE is defined as an entrepreneurial activity known to address basic human needs such as giving access to basic education, employment, health aid, community development, and socio-economic empowerment. It differs from commercial entrepreneurship because SE focuses on social strategies and values because they believe in the importance of creating social changes, which has the potential payoff and transformational benefits to those involved whether in providing or receiving the services. Such impact is reflected on social entrepreneur's satisfaction, happiness, meaningfulness of life, social connectedness and health. However, the limited research on well-being in Malaysia relies on measures that simply assess an individual's satisfaction with specific aspects of life such as housing and income. Therefore, these measures are not appropriate to assess the positive impact of SE on social entrepreneur's well-being. Thus, after meticulous reviews of literature through Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA), an insight on the number of records were identified through the applied search engines. As a result, the search stratagem came out with a framework of well-being measures that take into account behavioural, cognitive intentions, motivational choices, feeling and functioning of social entrepreneurs. After a full text review, about seven articles were included yielding four identified domains associated to well-being and social entrepreneurs

Climate change adaptation ability among Sabahan highland farmers

This study aims to gain more understanding of Sabahan highland farmers’ capacity to adapt to the impacts of climate change. This study uses a multi-stage cluster sampling involving 200 highland farmers around Kundasang and Moyog. The data were the analysed using independent t-test, ANOVA, and Pearson correlation. Sabahan highland farmers have a high cognitive awareness towards the changes in their ecosystem, high practices by diversifying their crops, extending their harvest land and also learn other skills related to agriculture and skills impertinent to agriculture to convalesce their household income. However, their structure support was weak as they do not have many livelihood options other than agriculture

Developing an instrument to measure Malaysian highland farmers' adaptation towards climate change

This paper aims to explicate the instrument development process for measuring Malaysian highland farmers’ adaptation towards climate change. The process consisted five phases, namely understanding the background of study, comprehensive review of literature; detailed review of each item; establishing the reliability of instrument and strengthening the instrument. Based on the reliability analysis and validity procedures by the research team, several modifications were made. The finalized instrument contains a total of five sections, namely demographic (18 items), cognitive (12 items), practices (seven items), structure (nine items) and cost (15 items). Towards the end, the researchers planned to use the developed instrument to conduct a related study at three main highland farming areas in Malaysia namely Lojing, Cameron Highland and Kundasang

Relationship between facebook function usage and social cohesion, and the moderating effect of social group, among rural youth virtual communities in Malaysia

The focus of this study is to determine the moderating effect of social group on the relationship between Facebook functionality usage and social cohesion among rural youth virtual communities. This study focuses on 1Malaysia Wireless Village youths in Peninsular Malaysia. Specifically, the objectives of this research are to 1) determine the level of social cohesion among 1Malaysia Wireless Village rural youth virtual communities; 2) determine the frequency of Facebook functionality usage; 3) identify the significant Facebook functionality usage that most contribute towards the level of social cohesion; 4) test the moderating effect of social group on the relationship between Facebook functionality usage and the level of social cohesion. This study is imperative to understand the efficacy of Facebook usage among rural youth and the outcome of this study could aid in relevant parties in planning for future programmes that involve social cohesion among the youth in Malaysia. Additionally, this study has further looked into the Theory of Interdependence and the Theory of Self Identity by relating them to the motivation for Facebook functionality usage. This study involved a total of 400 rural youths living within 1Malaysia Wireless Villages in Perlis, Negeri Sembilan, Seremban and Terengganu. This study uses a quantitative method of distributing a set of questionnaires that were developed from previous research findings and instruments. About 30 respondents were selected during the pre-test. This study utilized both SPSS and AMOS for data analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the socio-demographic background of the respondents, the frequency of Facebook functionality usage and the level of social cohesion among rural youth virtual communities. The rest of the analysis involving correlations and the moderation effect were done using the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) in AMOS. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and measurement model in SEM were used in this study to test the reliability and the validity of the constructed model (convergent and discriminant). SEM was utilised to identify the correlation coefficient between the frequent use of the five Facebook functionalities and the inclination towards enhancing social cohesion. Finally, a multi-group analysis was used to test the moderating effect of social group on the causal effect of frequent Facebook functionality usage on social cohesion among the rural youth virtual communities of 1Malaysia Wireless Village. The findings of this study have shown that the level of social cohesion among 1Malaysia rural youth Facebook virtual community was only moderate (M = 2.88), which was highly inclined by the respondent’s sense of togetherness (M = 2.94) and sense of belonging (M = 2.93) towards their virtual community. The most frequently used Facebook functionality among the rural youths of 1Malaysia Wireless Village has been Group (M=2.93) and Conversation (M=2.86). It was identified that the frequent use of Facebook functionality usage contributed about 76% towards the level of social cohesion, the frequent use of Conversation (β=0.415), Group (β=0.348), Identity (β=0.201) and Reputation (β=0.167) functionalities would influence the respondent’s perceived sense of social cohesion. The frequent use of Conversation functionality usage was seen as the most contributed factor towards these rural youth’s sense of social cohesion on Facebook. Furthermore, social group was discovered to have a moderating effect on the relationship between the frequency of Sharing and Reputation functionality on Facebook and enhancing rural youth’s sense of social cohesion, members of in-group felt a higher social cohesion towards their Facebook virtual community compared to the out-group