PROBLEMS OF INTERNALLY DISPLACED JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS CAMPS, MAIDUGURI METROPOLIS, BORNO STATE, NIGERIA

This study assessed problems of internally displaced Junior Secondary School Students in Maiduguri IDPs camps Borno State, Nigeria. The one research questions and one null hypothesis were formulated to guide the study. Survey research design was adapted for the study. Five IDPs Camps were sampled, with the population of 2,369 of which 1,075 were males and 1,294 were females. Stratified random sampling technique was used to obtain 222 males and 275 females. Research instruments were used for data collection, which was developed by the researcher with the help of the supervisor and assistance from an expert in Measurement and Evaluation Department of Social Science Education, University of Maiduguri. The data collected was describe using descriptive statistics of frequency counts and percentages in answering the research questions while chi-square was used in testing the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The results revealed that the displaced students were faced with educational, health and challenges of basic needs. The study also found that there was significant gender difference in problems of displaced Junior Secondary School Students in Maiduguri IDPs Camps. The study also concluded that female’s students experienced more psychological problems compared to male students. It, therefore, recommended that Counselling Association of Nigeria (CASSON) Borno State chapter should be visiting the IDPs camps to interact and providing counselling services to the IDPs and also if there is need of referral, they should refer them to appropriate bodies. Article visualizations

Crisis informatics: a systematic evaluation

Crisis management and communication are increasingly being challenged by the impact of social media as a forum for crisis communication. Among the many roles that crisis management services embrace, managing outreach information and communication are increasingly important. This study presents a systematic review of articles pertaining to the application of social media to support crisis management. Our review presents that, Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) is the most dominant theory for crisis communication and twitter is the dominant social network site. Also, the review identifies decision-making, community resilience, privacy issues, information sharing and seeking, social media based crisis communication for future studies

PREVENTIVE AND CURATIVE HEALTH SERVICES IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN BORNO STATE, NIGERIA: IMPLICATIONS FOR COUNSELLING

The study which was a survey, investigated the preventive and curative health services in secondary schools in Borno State. Target population of the study comprised of 6,786 senior secondary school students. However, 7,500 staff and students constituted the sample for the study. Researchers’ self-authored instrument tagged “School Health Services Questionnaire” (SHSQ) was used in collecting data for the study. Data collected was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Three research questions and two null-hypotheses piloted the study. Descriptive statistics of frequency counts and percentages were used in answering the research questions while t-test was used in testing the null-hypotheses at 0.05 alpha level. Results of the study revealed that nutritional, medical, immunization and preventive health services are the top most preventive and curative health services rendered in secondary schools in Borno State, while health evaluation and health counselling constituted the least health services rendered. The study also revealed significant differences between school location and health services rendered in secondary schools and that significant differences also exist between school type and health services rendered in secondary schools in Borno State, Nigeria. The implications of these findings to counselling were discussed.  Article visualizations

African neuroscience on the global stage: Nigeria as a model

Of the 572 neuroscience-related studies published in Nigerian from 1996 to 2017, <5% used state-of-the-art techniques, none used transgenic models, and only one study was published in a top-tier journal

IoT Raspberry Pi Based Smart Parking System with Weighted K-Nearest Neighbours Approach

Due to the limited availability of parking slots in parking areas, drivers often have difficulty finding an empty parking slot. The number of parking slots available at a particular location is usually less than the number of vehicles. Hence, drivers spend a lot of time looking for vacant parking slots, which eventually delays the completion of their tasks, such as paying bills, attending a meeting, or visiting a patient at the hospital, etc. There are a couple of parking guidance systems that have been highlighted by the other researchers, but most of them lack real-time, convenient guidance. This research proposed a smart parking guidance system made of an IoT Raspberry Pi combined with an Android application that makes use of the weighted k nearest neighbours for positioning the vehicle. This was achieved through the use of Wi-Fi signal strength indicator fingerprinting, allowing for real-time navigation and parking detection. In order to achieve real-time parking over the internet, Raspberry Pi hardware and the ThingSpeak IoT cloud with ultrasonic sensors are used in the proposed method. An Android application was involved in this parking detection system, which adopted IoT approaches to estimate the location of users in real-time and provide routes using route-finding techniques to assist drivers in finding their desired parking slots. Data from the sensors was processed and translated into the Raspberry Pi using the Python programming language. They were sent using the Message Telemetry Transport protocol to send parking data to the ThingSpeak IoT cloud in real-time. This data was displayed via the Android app. The user is then able to view each available parking slot, acquire the route, and be directed with high accuracy to the parking slots of their choice. In this study, advanced sensing and communication technologies were used together with the weighted k nearest neighbours algorithm for positioning and wayfinding in order to improve parking guidance accuracy. Based on the experimental results, the proposed system showed a lower average error rate of 1.5 metres in comparison to other positioning techniques, such as GPS, or other similar algorithms for positioning, such as maximum a posteriori, which have shown average errors of 2.3 metres and 3.55 metres, respectively, a potential increase of more than 35% from the previous error rate. Doi: 10.28991/CEJ-2023-09-08-012 Full Text: PD

Crisis informatics in the context of social media crisis communication: theoretical models, taxonomy, and open issues

The involvement application and use of crisis and emergency management and communication are increasing rapidly. This study conducts a systematic literature review to identify the development of theoretical models in the area of social media crisis communication and management. The study aims to review and analyse the relationship of social media-based crisis communication in the context of crisis informatics and its taxonomy and the related crisis communication theoretical models to derive the challenges and limitations. A total of 207 articles were selected for the evaluation based on quality, relevancy, and contribution. The findings revealed that the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) is the most dominant theory, followed by social-mediated crisis communication (SMCC) and integrated crisis mapping (ICM) models. The study identified theories such as the STREMII model, social media crisis management matrix/framework (SMSMF), and an interactive crisis communication model (ICCM) as emerging models. Moreover, the result of the finding shows that stakeholder interaction is an understudied field, while information reliability and processing for decision-making purposes, the wider application of social media sites, privacy issues, and how social media interaction can improve community resilience or build stakeholders relationships remain suitable topics for future research

Subjective reasons for COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and sociodemographic predictors of vaccination in Nigeria: an online survey

The purpose of this study was to examine the subjective reasons for hesitancy to receive COVID-19 vaccination and the sociodemographic factors associated with vaccination uptake. An online social media survey was conducted among the general Nigerian population using a self-developed questionnaire. Data were analyzed using binary logistic regression with crude and adjusted odds ratios (AOR) at a 95% confidence interval (CI) and a p value of less than 0.05. A total of 576 participants with a mean age of 31.86 years participated in the study. 28% (n = 158) received one or more doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. Teachers were significantly less likely than health professionals to be vaccinated (AOR = 0.33, 95% CI 0.16&ndash;0.69). In addition, unemployed people (AOR = 0.37, 95% CI 0.15&ndash;0.89) were less likely to be vaccinated than government employees, and those of intermediate socioeconomic status (AOR = 0.47 95% CI 0.26&ndash;0.88) were less likely to be vaccinated than were those of high socioeconomic status. Five main themes emerged regarding participants&rsquo; subjective reasons for hesitating to receive the COVID-19 vaccine: fear related to vaccine content (e.g., efficacy), negative effects on the body (e.g., blood clots), distrust of the system/government (e.g., politics), psychological concerns (e.g., anxiety), and misconceptions. Sociodemographic variables and vaccine misconceptions were found to play an important role in COVID-19 vaccination coverage in Nigeria

Systematic review of using machine learning in imputing missing values

Missing data are a universal data quality problem in many domains, leading to misleading analysis and inaccurate decisions. Much research has been done to investigate the different mechanisms of missing data and the proper techniques in handling various data types. In the last decade, machine learning has been utilized to replace conventional methods to address the problem of missing values more efficiently. By studying and analyzing recently proposed methods using machine learning approaches, vital adoptions in accuracy, performance, and time consumed can be highlighted. This study aimed to help data analysts and researchers address the limitations of machine learning imputation methods by conducting a systematic literature review to provide a comprehensive overview of using such methods to impute missing values. Novel proposed machine learning approaches used for data imputation are analyzed and summarized to assist researchers in selecting a proper machine learning method based on several factors and settings. The review was performed on research studies published between 2016 and 2021 on adopting machine learning to impute missing values, focusing on their strengths and limitations. A total of 684 research articles from various scientific databases were analyzed using search engines, and 94 of them were selected as primary studies. Finally, several recommendations were given to guide future researchers in applying machine learning to impute missing values

Model of social media crisis communication for predicting public resilience

Many scholars have proved the application and effectiveness of technology in crisis management and communication. In particular, social media has been effective for both formal and informal communication during and after a crisis. However, what matters to people when a crisis occurs is recovery, which involves resilience. Hence, researchers must begin to experiment on how social media is helping people to recover from a crisis and what social media task helps people recover quickly. Therefore, this study investigates existing crisis communication models from literature to identify commonalities within these models then proposes a social media crisis communication and resilience model (SMCCR). Moreover, the objectives of the study are to find out the impact of crisis response on social media interaction and public resilience, to determine the direct impact of social media interaction on public resilience, and to investigate the mediating effect of social media interaction on public resilience and the mediating effect crisis response on public resilience. An operational research framework comprising literature review, model development, model validation, and result was adopted to address the research problem. An SMCCR model was derived based on the synthesis and thematic analysis of existing theoretical models. Specifically, situational crisis communication theory (SCCT), an interactive crisis communication model (ICCM), STREMII model, and social media disaster resilience model (SMDR) was adapted. A confirmatory study that involved an expert evaluation, pilot test, and a survey was conducted. The expert evaluation was conducted in two rounds with four experts, respectively. The first round was revised due to aggregated ratings to improve the agreement among the experts. Subsequently, based on the feedback of the experts, the questionnaire items were revised. 34 items were finalized from the expert review and analyze by content validity index (CVI) and modified kappa statistics. After passing the validation test, the instruments were pre-tested by 32 participants. The responses were assessed based on Cronbach alpha, regression model, and the hypothesis was independently evaluated in process macro models. Afterward, a survey was conducted with a population of social media users who had experienced the Covid-19 crisis and were practicing physical distancing in Malaysia. The final sample consists of 393 responses that were analyzed using variance-based structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The reliability and validity of the SMCCR model were demonstrated through a confirmatory study. The findings revealed the relationships among model constructs, namely: crisis, crisis response, social interaction, and resilience. In this regard, all eight research hypotheses were supported. Descriptive statistics were also used to present the summary of the data collected in the study. The results of the investigation demonstrated the impacts of the SMCCR model in the real world and elucidated how it can assist crisis management organizations in understanding the impact of social media crisis responses and social interaction to improve the ability of the people to recover from the crisis. The study makes theoretical contributions by examining the role of social media crisis communication through crisis response and social interaction in addressing the impact of crisis communication on public resilience based on the theoretical lens of SCCT, ICCM, and SMDR. Likewise, the activities of crisis management to improve the ability of the people to recover from crisis quickly, the relationship between crisis, crisis response, social interaction, and resilience proves to be effective. This study offers empirical evidence that social media crisis communication influence people’s ability to recover from the crisis through the mediation of crisis responses and social media interaction

Crisis informatics in smart campus: opportunities, challenges, and future directions

Crisis Informatics is a term that describes the use of social media for emergency. This paper select articles on schools crisis communication from an ongoing research on assessment of crisis communication theories and models. The focus is to present state of the art opportunities and challenges facing universities and educational establishment in crisis. This review helps stakeholders to see the significance of social media as part of the crisis communication plan. The findings recommend ways for future research and for emergency correspondence to comprehend the significance of the universities utilization of social media during an emergency, why that is significant, and why specialists should make viable social media communication strategies a need during an emergency