A questionnaire for assessing breastfeeding intentions and practices in Nigeria: validity, reliability and translation

BACKGROUND: Validating a questionnaire/instrument (whether developed or adapted) before proceeding to the field for data collection is important. This article presents the modification of an Irish questionnaire for a Nigerian setting. The validation process and reliability testing of this questionnaire (which was used in assessing previous breastfeeding practices and breastfeeding intentions of pregnant women in English and Hausa languages) were also presented. METHOD: Five experts in the field of breastfeeding and infant feeding voluntarily and independently evaluated the instrument. The experts evaluated the various items of the questionnaire based on relevance, clarity, simplicity and ambiguity on a Likert scale of 4. The analysis was performed to determine the content validity index (CVI).Two language experts performed the translation and back-translation. Ten pregnant women completed questionnaires which were evaluated for internal consistency. Two other pregnant women completed the questionnaire twice at an interval of two weeks to test the reliability. SPSS version 21 was used to calculate the coefficient of reliability. RESULTS: The content validity index was high (0.94 for relevance, clarity and ambiguity and 0.96 for simplicity). The analysis suggested that four of the seventy one items should be removed. Cronbach's Alpha was 0.81, while the reliability coefficient was 0.76. The emerged validated questionnaire was translated from English to Hausa, then, back-translated into English and compared for accuracy. CONCLUSION: The final instrument is reliable and valid for data collection on breastfeeding in Nigeria among English and Hausa speakers. Therefore, the instrument is recommended for use in assessing breastfeeding intention and practices in Nigeria

Co-designing playful interactions for public health in green spaces

Public green spaces such as parks are key contributors to peoples’ health and wellbeing. Users often underutilise these green spaces in terms of undertaking casual physical activities and are recognised as having the most to gain from participating in their use and development. The Active Parks project aimed to co-design a concept for a playful and interactive ‘health trail’ in a green space to explore the effects of playful interactive experiences on the casual physical activity of park users. In a series of co-design workshops with local residents, the Lancaster City Council and NHS Lancashire Public Health, a numbers of ideas and concepts were developed, which informed the design proposition of the health trail offering new ways of motivating and taking physical activity specific to local people in their park. Three versions of a proof-of-concept digital prototype - large-scale musical instrument - were developed to explore how it could be used and implemented in the park. Pilot testing showed that the prototypes encouraged positive experiences of intergenerational casual physical activity among young children and teenagers, their parents and grandparents. Users described the experience as ‘fun’, ‘magical’ and ‘brilliant’ and were positive in their feedback about the prospect of the idea becoming a reality in their park. Reflecting on the co-design process the paper recognises the successes of the project while questioning a lack of opportunity for participants to engage in the rich knowledge generation experience of prototyping in the evaluative design phase as a barrier to further innovation

Speculative Requirements: Design Fiction and RE

Many innovative software products are conceived, developed and deployed without any conventional attempt to elicit stakeholder requirements. Rather, they are the result of the vision and intuition of a small number of creative individuals who perceive a market opportunity that has been facilitated by the emergence of a new technology. In this paper we consider how the conditions that enable new products' emergence might be better anticipated, making innovations a little less reliant on individual vision and a little more informed by stakeholder need. We contend that this is particularly important where just-over-the-horizon technology would have the potential for social impact, good or bad. Speculative design describes a basket of techniques that seek to explore this landscape. We focus particularly on one of these, design fiction, and describe a case study where it was used to explore how plausible new technologies might impact on dementia care

Internal Marketing Strategy and Employee Performance

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the influence of internal marketing strategy on employee performance. More specifically, the study adopted the Greene et al (1994) domains of internal marketing such as: internal marketing promotion and reward systems as the predictor variable, while affective organizational commitment was adopted as the study moderating variable and employee performance as the criterion variable. The study adopted the quantitative research approach with the use of questionnaire instrument to elicit data from the target population; thereafter 150 employees were systematically selected from 10 service firms in the aviation sector located at the Port Harcourt International Airport of Nigeria; five insider contact men were used to distribute the questionnaire instrument. 126 units of the questionnaire were retrieved as used; the data generated were also analyzed using the Pearson Product moment Correlation Coefficient and Simple Regression with the support of SPSS version 18 to analyze the core data. Finding showed that internal marketing promotion has significant and positive impact on employee performance. Also, internal marketing reward systems showed a positive and significant impact on employee performance and a positive correlation was found between affective organizational commitment and employee performance. Therefore, this study has validated that internal marketing strategy is a strong tool for wining employee’s commitment to work especially in the Nigeria Aviation sector. , it recommend for the stakeholders and managers of firms in the Nigerian aviation industry to engage the internal marketing strategy to motivate its employees to be optimally productive. Also, the managers of the firm should play the transformational leadership roles to its employees rather than the transactional leadership style which has the possibility of declining employees work performance. However, the implication of implementing this study recommendations are that employees’ performance in terms of productivity will be enhanced. KEYWORDS: Internal Marketing; Affective Organizational Commitment; Internal Marketing Promotion; Reward Systems; Employee Performance; Aviation &Nigeri

Breastfeeding intentions and practices of women in Plateau State, Nigeria : a cross-sectional study of women attending antenatal clinics in selected hospitals

Includes bibliographical references.Breastfeeding exclusively for the first 6 months of a child’s life, and subsequently continuing to breastfeed until the child is 2 years old, potentially reduces maternal and child morbidity and mortality and has numerous benefits for mother and child. Infant feeding practices can change within a short period due to several modifiable factors. Underpinned by the Health Belief Model, this study attempted to identify the breastfeeding practices of women and the factors that influence these practices. The study also assessed mothers’ intentions to breastfeed the baby/infant following delivery of the current pregnancy

The Little Book of Speculative Design for Policy-makers

This Little Book tells you what Speculative Design is, what the benefits for policy-making are, and how it can be used by policy-makers. This book is based on our research conducted for the ProtoPolicyAsia: empowering local communities and Government in Malaysia in addressing social issues in ageing and disabilities, funded by the AHRC

The Little Book of Speculative Design for NGOs and Community Groups

This Little Book presents what Speculative Design is, what are its benefits for NGOs and Community Groups, and how it can be used by these groups in Malaysia, as well as other countries. This book is based on our research conducted for the ProtoPolicyAsia: empowering local communities and Government in Malaysia in addressing social issues in ageing and disabilities, funded by the AHRC

Explainable AI for Autism Diagnosis: Identifying Critical Brain Regions Using fMRI Data

Early diagnosis and intervention for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has been shown to significantly improve the quality of life of autistic individuals. However, diagnostics methods for ASD rely on assessments based on clinical presentation that are prone to bias and can be challenging to arrive at an early diagnosis. There is a need for objective biomarkers of ASD which can help improve diagnostic accuracy. Deep learning (DL) has achieved outstanding performance in diagnosing diseases and conditions from medical imaging data. Extensive research has been conducted on creating models that classify ASD using resting-state functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data. However, existing models lack interpretability. This research aims to improve the accuracy and interpretability of ASD diagnosis by creating a DL model that can not only accurately classify ASD but also provide explainable insights into its working. The dataset used is a preprocessed version of the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange (ABIDE) with 884 samples. Our findings show a model that can accurately classify ASD and highlight critical brain regions differing between ASD and typical controls, with potential implications for early diagnosis and understanding of the neural basis of ASD. These findings are validated by studies in the literature that use different datasets and modalities, confirming that the model actually learned characteristics of ASD and not just the dataset. This study advances the field of explainable AI in medical imaging by providing a robust and interpretable model, thereby contributing to a future with objective and reliable ASD diagnostics

Substance usage intention does not affect attentional bias: implications from Ecstasy/MDMA users and alcohol drinkers

Background: An attentional bias towards substance-related stimuli has been demonstrated with alcohol drinkers and many other types of substance user. There is evidence to suggest that the strength of an attentional bias may vary as a result of context (or use intention), especially within Ecstasy/MDMA users. Objective: Our aim was to empirically investigate attentional biases by observing the affect that use intention plays in recreational MDMA users and compare the findings with that of alcohol users. Method: Regular alcohol drinkers were compared with MDMA users. Performance was assessed for each group separately using two versions of an eye-tracking attentional bias task with pairs of matched neutral, and alcohol or MDMA-related visual stimuli. Dwell time was recorded for alcohol or MDMA. Participants were tested twice, when intending and not intending to use MDMA or alcohol. Note, participants in the alcohol group did not complete any tasks which involved MDMA-related stimuli and vice versa. Results: Significant attentional biases were found with both MDMA and alcohol users for respective substance-related stimuli, but not control stimuli. Critically, use intention did not affect attentional biases. Attentional biases were demonstrated with both MDMA users and alcohol drinkers when usage was and was not intended. Conclusions: These findings demonstrate the robust nature of attentional biases i.e. once an attentional bias has developed, it is not readily affected by intention

Dataset of urban development analysis in a section of Kuje Area Council, Abuja, Nigeria.

Urban development will likely continue to increase in suburban areas to cater for the growing human population. In Nigeria, the relevant analysis of these urban developments is not well documented. This article presents spatiotemporal datasets for analysing urban developments in a suburb of Kuje, an Area Council within the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria. Data from Google Earth (GE) historical imagery of 2005 was used as a baseline for analysis and was compared with a UAV digital orthomosaic of 2019 to quantify urban developments. This data provides useful information on the status of urban development that has taken place in the Kuje suburb over 14 years. The data will be of great importance to town planners and urban development authorities for future planning, and for making informed decisions about urban development issues in the area