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Fertility rates in Nigeria are declining at such a modest rate, that if more proactive measures are not employed to reduce fertility, the nation may double its population before long. We empirically examined fertility behaviour as derivatives of specific subgroup social norms, and the variations in the factors responsible for different fertility behaviours, using the 2018 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey. Descriptive bivariate, and multinomial logistic regression analyses were used to predict the contribution of demographic and sociocultural factors contributing to the fertility level, and findings were reported as odds ratios. Results revealed that age, religion and level of education are the most significant predictors of fertility level, with remarkable differences in birth rate across subgroups, whereas North-West Nigeria had the highest fertility level. Furthermore, marriage had a significantly negative effect on high fertility among North-Western women, whereas higher education significantly increased high fertility among North-Eastern women. In conclusion, subgroup social norms fertility behaviour is responsible for the persistent fertility differential outcome in Nigeria. Thus, the paper strongly advocates the need to intensify community-led, norm-based solution and not a universal approach in addressing fertility control in Nigeria.

Fertility in sub-Saharan Africa is among the highest globally and relatively higher in West Africa compared to the other sub-regions of Africa. While there have been extensive studies on fertility in West Africa, the underlying spatial variations with regard to within and cross-border variations among countries has received little attention. This study examined spatial variations in fertility desire among thirteen (13) West African countries using data from the most recent Demographic and Health Survey conducted between 2010 and 2018. The analysis considers two fertility indicators; preference for another child and ideal number of children, and the spatial units were the states/regions/provinces of the countries included in the study. Bayesian spatial models were specified for the count and multi-categorical response variables respectively, with the use of Markov random field prior for the spatial components while Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation technique was used for parameter estimation. The findings suggest spatial clustering in fertility desire both within and between countries, revealing cross-border spatial contagion. Specifically, women report high number of children as ideal throughout Niger extending to neighbouring northern Nigeria, in Mopti and Koulikoro regions of Mali; in Couffo region of Benin; in Kaffrine region of Senegal and all except Basse region of The Gambia. Additionally, being young, having low or no formal education, living in poor households, being a rural dweller and not using contraceptives were negatively associated with fertility desire. Policies aimed at reducing fertility should consider the spatial dynamics in addition to targeting younger, less educated, rural dwelling women while also strengthening sensitization campaigns for family planning.

In recent years South Africa has had to deal with the problem of multiple disease burdens. Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are rising and emerging as the leading causes of death in the country. Ex...

Against the background of the fertility decline in South Africa in recent years, the present study aimed at understanding the factors that shape South African women’s general childbearing aspirations. Specifically, it sought to examine the effect of selected sociodemographic factors on the fertility aspirations of two groups of reproductive-aged women in South Africa, 15–34 years (younger women) and 35–49 years (older women). The results showed that being black African, having at least secondary-level education, urban residence, being employed and increased parity significantly determined women’s intentions for children, regardless of the age cohort. Belonging to a ‘richer’ wealth index category and living in a household of three or more people significantly determined fertility intentions for younger women, while cohabitation significantly determined fertility intentions for older women. The study also found that urban residence and increased parity significantly reduced fertility indecision for younger women only. Implications for policy interventions are discussed.

This chapter analyses efficiency of support vector regression (SVR), artificial neural networks (ANNs), and structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) models in terms of in-sample forecasting of portfolio inflows (PIs). Time series daily data sourced from Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) covering the period of 1st March 2004 to 1st February 2016 were used. Mean squared error, root mean squared error, mean absolute error, mean absolute squared error, and root mean scaled log error were used to evaluate model performance. The results showed that SVR has the best modelling performance when compared to others. In determining factors that affect allocation of PIs into South Africa based on SVAR, 69% of the variation was explained by pull factors while 9% was explained by push factor. Hence, SVR model is more accurate than ANNs. This chapter therefore recommends that banking sector particularly RMB should use machine learning technique in modelling PIs for a better financial solution.

IntroductionAsthma and allergic disorders are of global concern and risk for their development results from the interplay of genetic and environmental factors. Among numerous environmental factors identified to influence the disease risk, the role of exposure to a farming environment has gained interest in recent times, but the underlying evidence is conflicting. The review aims to comprehensively identify, critically appraise and synthesise evidence from studies investigating the association between farm living and risk of asthma and allergic diseases in children and adults.Methods and analysisWe will identify relevant analytical observational epidemiological studies, including cross-sectional, case-control and cohort studies, by searching PubMed, Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), WHO Global Health Library, Web of Science, Scopus and Embase. Screening of identified records, data extraction from eligible studies and risk of bias assssment of eligible studies will be independently undertaken by two reviewers, with arbitration by a third reviewer. The Effective Public Health Practice Project will be employed for the risk of bias assessment. Estimates from studies judged to be clinically, methodologically and statistically homogeneous will be synthesised using random-effects meta-analysis. Heterogeneity will be assessed using the I-squared statistic. We will consider objectively measured or self-reported asthma, atopic dermatitis/eczema, allergic rhinitis, wheeze, and food allergy as primary outcomes.Ethics and disseminationAs this study is based solely on the published literature, no ethics approval is required. The study findings will be presented at scientific meetings related to the field of asthma and allergy and will be published in an international peer-reviewed scientific journal.PROSPERO registration numberCRD42020208805.

South Africa accounts for the largest share of the global HIV epidemic, both in the number of people living with HIV and in new infection rates. In the context of the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS an...

This paper proposes an alternative randomized response technique by improving existing works on tripartite randomized response technique (TRRT) using unrelated questions. To improve the technique, this work studies TRRT under sampling with unequal probabilities with or without replacement. The study of percentage relative efficiency shows that the proposed estimator is far better than the Hybrid Tripartite Randomized Response Technique with increase in the sensitive character and that of the unrelated character. In addition, conducting survey using both the proposed technique and direct (traditional) technique shows that the proposed technique is more efficiency than the direct technique of data collection.

This paper is a synthesis summary of an evaluation of the drama in Ogun and Oyo states. It is a four-phased Flexi Track survey and evaluation of the serial drama, which sought to assess the listenership, popularity and behavioural change impact of the radio drama among the target population.

This chapter presents a new direction to the scheduling problem by exploring the Moore-Hodgson algorithm. This algorithm is used within the context of integer programming to come up with complementarity conditions, more biding constraints, and a strong lower bound for the scheduling problem. With Moore-Hodgson Algorithm, the alternate optimal solutions cannot be easily generated from one optimal solution; however, with integer formulation, this is not a problem. Unfortunately, integer formulations are sometimes very difficult to handle as the number jobs increases. Therefore, the integer formulation presented in this chapter uses infeasibility to verify optimality with branch and bound related algorithms. Thus, the lower bound was obtained using pre-processing and shown to be highly accurate and on its own can be used in those situations where quick scheduling decisions are required.

Youth mortality is a challenge in South Africa, where on a daily basis a number of deaths are reported and are related to youth. This study used the 2014 Statistics South Africa data to examine the influence of sociodemographic factors on causes of death among South African youth aged 15-34 years, using a logistic regression model. The results showed that there is a significant relationship between education and causes of death as well as other sociodemographic factors and that the youth mortality will likely reduce if more youth have higher levels of education. The results of this study could be used to improve national prevention campaigns to reduce death among young South Africans, especially adolescents.

Globally, there have been significant changes in women’s reproductive behaviour that have had profound effects on population growth. Despite declining fertility in South Africa in recent years, population growth is yet to slow down. This study examined patterns of childbearing in contemporary South Africa. Specifically, it investigated the prevalence of fertility among women of different relationship status and its associated social, economic, and cultural factors. Cross-sectional survey data from 6,124 responses of women in the reproductive age (15–49 years old) to the 2016 South African Demographic and Health Survey were used to decompose fertility into its constituent parts and analysed using binary logistic regression techniques. The findings showed that both marital and nonmarital childbirths significantly contribute to the overall fertility levels in South Africa. Moreover, the results showed that race, ethnicity, household size, age at first sex and contraceptive use were risk factors for childbearing among South African women of childbearing age, while younger age, increased education and wealth were found to be protective factors against childbearing. Policy implications of the findings are discussed.

The unrelated design has been shown to improve the efficiency of a randomized response method and reduces respondents’ suspicion. In the light of this, the paper proposes a new Unrelated Randomized Response Model constructed by incorporating an unrelated question into the alternative unbiased estimator in the dichotomous randomized response model proposed by Ewemooje in 2019. An unbiased estimate and variance of the model are thus obtained. The variance of the proposed model decreases as the proportion of the sensitive attribute π_A and the unrelated attribute π_U increases, in contrast to the earlier Ewemooje model, whose variance increases as the proportion of the sensitive attribute increases. The relative efficiency of the proposed model over the earlier Ewemooje model decreases as π_U increases when 0.1≤π_A≤ 0.3 and increases as π_U increases when 0.35≤π_A≤ 0.45. Application of the proposed model also revealed its efficiency over the direct method in estimating the prevalence of examination malpractices among university students;the direct method gave an estimate of 19.0%, compared to the proposed method’s estimate of 23.0%. Hence, the proposed model is more efficient than the direct method and the earlier Ewemooje model as the proportion of people belonging to the sensitive attribute increases.

This article presents extensive description of survey data on the political participation of 913 male and female undergraduate students at the University of Ghana. Multi-stage and other sampling procedures were employed to collect the data that took place between 2016 and 2017. Data were analysed using frequencies, percentages and cross-tabulations for each gender separately. The findings revealed that females reported discussing politics more frequently with others than their male counterparts, in addition, ethnicity significantly associated with political discussion and religion significantly associated with political involvement for females. However, males expressed interest and involvement in political activities at both national and student levels more frequently than their female counterparts. The findings support much of the observations in the political behavior literature. Despite the gender imbalance, respondents were partial to engagement in student politics than national politics. It is, therefore, advisable that political parties focus their recruitment efforts on university campuses.

Obtaining correct responses to sensitive questions in social and behavioural researches is an ancient problem in survey research with respondents misreporting on sensitive behaviours or giving false response to protect themselves. This paper develops an alternative unbiased estimator by modifying the dichotomous randomized response technique model to tackle this problem. The proposed estimator was compared numerically with conventional ones by considering different practicable and suitable design choices. Proposed model was also considered when sampling with unequal probabilities with or without replacement. It was observed that the proposed estimator performs efficiently than the conventional ones. As the proposed model captures progressively more people involved in the sensitive attribute, the model outperforms other models considered. Therefore, social and behavioural researchers can now obtain correct and valid responses from sensitive behavioural researches with ease in order to make informed and reliable decisions.

In this paper, a new randomized response technique has been proposed that combines the unrelated question randomized response technique and tripartite randomized response technique. The relative efficiency of the newly proposed Randomized Response technique over the existing Randomized Response technique was obtained. It was observed that the relative efficiency of the proposed technique over the tripartite RRT increases with increase in πA and πU. The applicability of the proposed technique was also shown. However, it has been shown that the proposed technique performs better than the conventional ones.

The study examined the prevalence of two related sensitive characters: induced abortion and multiple sexual partners among women of Akure, the state capital of Ondo state, Nigeria using improved randomized response technique (RRT) for two sensitive attributes (IRRT2). Also, the direct method of data collection was used in collecting information on the two sensitive characters, these were further compared with the IRRT2. A wide gap was noticed between the two methods as response rate increased tremendously with the use of IRRT2. The data collected also confirm the fact that RRT is far more efficient than direct method.

Maternal Mortality was discussed in this study with associated obstetric risk factors in order to examine its perceived determinants and contribution of mortality rate was calculated as 381deaths/100.000 live births. Simple descriptive analysis, Chi-square Independent test and spatial analysis were applied on 6-year study from which 33.615 deliveries resulting in 128 perinatal deaths. The maternal fetal death, Antepartum Haemorrhage and Eclampsia were found to significantly causing 13.7%, 12.9% and 12.9% maternal deaths, respectively. For every unit increase in the mother's age, the risk of being involved in maternal deaths increases with caesarean section as the leading risk factor. The Mother and Child Hospitals have helped in reducing the Maternal Mortality by about 51% in the state from 745 per 100.000 live births in 2009 to 381 per 100.000 live births in 2016.

La malhonnetete academique est restee endemique dans les etablissements d'enseignement superieur, malgre les efforts deployes pour la combattre. Des recherches anterieures sur l'etat de la malhonnetete academique parmi les universitaires utilisent des methodes traditionnelles qui conduisent a des fausses reponses ou a des non-reponsse. Cependant, l'utilisation de techniques de reponses aleatoires a ete demontree theoriquement plus efficace que la methode traditionnelle avec quelques applications. Par consequent, cet article evalue le niveau de plagiat et de pratiques non-orthodoxes en appliquant une technique amelioree de reponses randomisees pour deux attributs sensibles (IRRT2). Puis elle est comparee aux methodes traditionnelles de collecte de donnees. Une enquete en ligne a ete realisee dans la plaeforme Google, aupres de 240 personnes d'Afrique, d'Amerique, d'Asie et d'Europe. Les resultats ont montre que le plus haut niveau de plagiat est enregistre parmi les universitaires de carriere intermediaire (10-19 ans). Ces travaux ont egalement revele qu'il serait peut-etre necessaire de minimiser la dependance excessive vis-a-vis des certificats et des articles de journaux en tant que moyen principal de promotion parmi les universitaires car cela reduirait le desespoir des enseignants et des etudiants. L'etude recommande egalement l'utilisation de la methode IRRT2 au lieu de la methode traditionnelle car elle conduit a des resultats optimaux.

Substance use disorder is often viewed as a sensitive issue as persons with the disorder keep their status as secretive as possible. This study measures the prevalence of substance use disorder among residents of Akure Metropolis. Tripartite Randomized Response Technique (TRRT) and the Direct Method (DM) were applied in the estimation of proportion. We also compared mean substance use disorder by respondents’ demographic characteristics and self-medication. The proportion was estimated as 0.575 using TRRT while DM gave 0.115 with variances 0.003 and 0.102, respectively. Hence, high rate of substance use disorder in the studied population with predominantly youths’ involvement. Key words : Direct Method, Estimation, Self-Medication, Substance Use Disorder, Tripartite Randomized Response Techniques.

We proposed new and more ecient estimators for estimating population proportion of respondents belonging to two related sensitive attributes in survey sampling by extending the work of Mangat(1994). Our proposed estimators are more ecient than Lee et al (2013) simple and crossed model estimators as the population proportion of possessing the sensitive attribute increases. Keywords: Eciency, Proportion Estimation, Randomized Response Techniques, Reliable Information, Unbiased Estimation

This work seeks to improve the procedure for estimating two sensitive characteristics at a time by introducing equal probabilities of protection on the randomized devices. Equal protection estimators have been proposed. It was discovered that equal probabilities of protection increases the efficiency. The proposed model and estimators have been shown to be more robust and efficient than the conventional ones.

This study examined the quality of education in the North Eastern part of Nigeria between 2004 and 2008. The study adopted the descriptive research design using ex-post facto type to look at the phenomenon. The study considered all the states in the zone as a unit and in some cases examined individual cases of some states. Considering the focus of the study, the data utilized was mainly secondary in nature and came chiefly from the National Social Statistics and National Annual Abstract of Statistics as available from National Bureau of Statistics. Three research questions were answered using simple percentage, average and ratio analysis. Findings revealed that only 30% of the teachers had the necessary national qualification to teach in 2005 and 2006 the percentage dipped further; the zone had an average of 190 and 90 pupils per class in 2004 and 2008 respectively; pupils per teacher ratio stood at 50 in 2004 and 44 in 2008. There seems to be an improvement over the years considered, but this might be deceptive because enrolment reduced from 4,021,853 to 3,237,507 in 2005 and 2008 respectively; which account for approximately 20% reduction. Also, it is clear that the total population of the zone and children in particular does not decline. The study concluded that the quality of education at the beginning of the financial crisis was already very low when compared with what is obtainable in other parts of Nigeria and the world at large. In the face of financial crisis: the zone is missing the global target for Universal Basic Education (UBE) as per quality; it affects the general literacy rating of Nigeria. It portends danger to human capital development, national security and overall national development in the nearest future. There is therefore need for improve on the funding, planning, programmes and actions urgently in the zone. This requires multi-level and multi-sectoral collaborations of the civil society and government. Above all there is need for the local communities to take ownership of the interventions, just as in some zones, to ensure sustainability of the programmes and progresses.

Most discussions on gender often focus on disadvantage of women but discussion on secondary school enrollment in the South Eastern geo-political zone in Nigeria is one of the few exceptions. While the zone, which is considered to be one of the academically privileged zone, generally records low male enrollment vis-a-vis female, Anambra State is the worst case scenario, as the 2003/2004 academic year records indicate. Observing this trend at the beginning of the 21st century, stakeholders, government, the apex Igbo cultural group – the Ohaneze Ndi Igbo – and community gatekeepers, raised an alarm and combined efforts to fight the phenomenon. In 2006 male enrollment rose from 43.3% in 2003/2004 to 78.3% in 2005/2006 academic session, however, in 2007/2008, when the financial crisis just began, male enrollment dropped to 62.6. The 15.7% drop from the previous progress made in the state is a cause for serious concern. This paper discusses the factors that could be responsible for this scenario that began and was increasing with the deepening global financial crisis. The underlying questions of the research are: What are the factors that are responsible for reversal of the previous progress made in keeping boys in school? What are the implications of the financial crisis on the efforts to keep boys in school? What are the effects of low male enrollment on human capital development of the state? Findings show that the financial crisis may have deepened the factors that account for the tendency of boys to drop out of school. The paper recommends improvement on the previous programmatic actions, social reorientation, new policy direction and funding of education in the state.