Facilitating factors and barriers to malaria research utilization for policy development in Malawi

BACKGROUND : Research on various determinants of health is key in providing evidence for policy development, thereby leading to successful interventions. Utilization of research is an intricate process requiring an understanding of contextual factors. The study was conducted to assess enhancing factors and barriers of research utilization for malaria policy development in Malawi. METHODS : Qualitative research approach was used through in-depth interviews with 39 key informants that included malaria researchers, policy makers, programme managers, and key stakeholders. Purposive sampling and snowballing techniques were used in identifying key informants. Interview transcripts were entered in QSR Nvivo 11 software for coding and analysis. RESULTS : Respondents identified global efforts as key in advancing knowledge translation, while local political will has been conducive for research utilization. Other factors were availability of research, availability of diverse local researchers and stakeholders supporting knowledge translation. While barriers included: lack of platforms for researcher-public engagement, politics, researchers’ lack of communication skills, lack of research collaborations, funder driven research, unknown World Health Organization policy position, and the lack of a malaria research repository. CONCLUSION : Overall, the study identified facilitating factors to malaria research utilization for policy development in Malawi. These factors need to be systematically coordinated to address the identified barriers and improve on malaria research utilization in policy development. Malaria research can be key in the implementation of evidence-based interventions to reduce the malaria burden and assist in the paradigm shift from malaria control to elimination in Malawi.University of Pretoria Institute for Sustainable Malaria Control (UP ISMC)http://www.malariajournal.comam2016School of Health Systems and Public Health (SHSPH

Web users with autism: eye tracking evidence for differences

Anecdotal evidence suggests that people with autism may have different processing strategies when accessing the web. However, limited empirical evidence is available to support this. This paper presents an eye tracking study with 18 participants with high-functioning autism and 18 neurotypical participants to investigate the similarities and differences between these two groups in terms of how they search for information within web pages. According to our analysis, people with autism are likely to be less successful in completing their searching tasks. They also have a tendency to look at more elements on web pages and make more transitions between the elements in comparison to neurotypical people. In addition, they tend to make shorter but more frequent fixations on elements which are not directly related to a given search task. Therefore, this paper presents the first empirical study to investigate how people with autism differ from neurotypical people when they search for information within web pages based on an in-depth statistical analysis of their gaze patterns

Web Accessibility Testing: When the Method is the Culprit

www.dimi.uniud.it/giorgio Abstract. Testing accessibility of a web site is still an art. Lack of appropriate definitions of accessibility and of standard testing methods are some of the reasons why Web accessibility is so difficult to achieve. The paper describes a heuristic walkthrough method based on barriers; it then discusses how methods like this can be evaluated, and it shows experimental data about validity and usefulness of the method when compared to standards review.

Photographs, railways, partition : domiciled Europeans in the later Raj

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.This thesis focuses on an analysis of a family narrative that is imbricated with the development of two significant technologies of modernity: photography and the railways. Originally both were a product of and complementary to the colonial project which brought with it new experiences and, through the consequences of Partition, fashioned national identities. The subjects created by these technologies were represented in images captured in vernacular photographs. However, over time as technologies were deployed into everyday life their effects reflected the changes taking place in the wider context of colonial India. My account of this time weaves the core biography of Leslie Nixon into a wider historical context to create a narrative that is derived from texts, semi-structured photo elicitation interviews using vernacular photographs (taken between 1910 and 1947) of the domiciled European and Anglo-Indian communities who lived along the Great Indian Peninsula Railway line in late colonial India. During my research I found little or no mention of photography practiced at an everyday level by long term ‘settlers’ that recorded life outside major cities. My combined reading of family photographs acts as an articulation of and between private, less authorised discourses against (but not counter to) those of the colonial bureaucracy. This raised questions and challenges around how to use family photographs in interviews to elicit accounts of personal experiences of public and very traumatic events like the Partition. I interrogate the stories people tell when presented with an image that resonates with the past and unsettles the present. Through my account I argue that photographs, to some degree, reflect the increasingly unstable colonial boundaries of the day. In addition various accounts by Gurkha soldiers and British officers in the last part of British rule during the Partition contribute a different perspective to the Partition narrative. Engagement with new technologies reflects the way physical space was experienced and managed during the late Raj and the inevitable outcome of colonial rule in the mayhem of Partition