Spreading the ETD Gospel: A Southern Africa Perspective

Rhodes University mounted its first digital thesis on the World Wide Web in 1998 and became the first institution in Africa to do so. Since then, the number of available theses and dissertations has steadily increased as more students come to appreciate the importance of submitting digital files or their theses. Also, the university Senate has now made it mandatory for students to submit digital files of their theses and dessertations. In order to make electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) produced by tertiary institutions in Southern Africa readily available, universities in the Southern African region were invited to join in the ETD initiative. This would lead to the building of a digital library of theses and dissertations in the region. A few institutions have responded positively and, based on the adoption of our approach, have speedily gained approval of their governing bodies to embark on ETD projects. In addition, the South East Academic Libraries (SEALS), a library consortium of tertiary institutions in the Eastern Province of South Africa, is considering an ETD programme since this would promote collaboration between research programmes at separate universities/technikons by making research work visible and accessible via a network archive.

It is, however, surprising that some institutional leaders appear not to have realized that the digital revolution makes it imperative for institutions to use digital and publishing technologies innovatively in the provision of information as well as in the preservation and dissemination of the institutions' intellectual property.

The paper will review existing African theses and dissertation projects, including the Database of African Theses and Dissertations (DATAD) and the African Universities Dissertations Abstracts (AFUDA) projects, it will discuss the status of the Rhodes University project, responses from other institutions in the region and make suggestions for accelerated involvement of tertiary institutions in Africa, especially Southern Africa, in the international network of theses and dissertations.     

Personal belief in a just world, experience of teacher justice, and school distress in different class contexts

The study examined the meaning of personal belief in a just world and students’ experience of their teachers’ behavior toward them personally for school distress in different class contexts. The study involved 827 secondary school students from 61 classes (grades 9 to 11). Analyses revealed that the more the students believed in a personal just world, the more they felt their teachers’ behavior toward them personally to be just, and the less school distress they experienced; the association between belief in a just world (BJW) and school distress was partly mediated by students’ personal experience of teacher justice. These associations were stable across school tracks, schools, and classes. According to these results and the just world theory, a strong BJW seems to function as a rather context-independent personal resource for students, explaining their individual experience of teacher justice and school distress. Moreover, teacher justice seems to be a key feature of schools explaining students’ well-being at school.     

Coherence estimate between a random and a periodic signal: Bias, variance, analytical critical values, and normalizing transforms

The present work deals with recent results on the sampling distribution of the magnitude-squared coherence (also called just coherence) estimate between a random (Gaussian) and a periodic signal, in order to obtain analytical critical values, alternative expressions for the probability density function (PDF) as well as the variance and bias of the estimate. A comparison with the more general case of coherence estimation when both signals are Gaussian was also provided. The results indicate that the smaller the true coherence (TC) values the closer both distributions become. The behaviour of variance and bias as a function of the number of data segments and the TC is similar for both coherence estimates. Additionally, the effect of a normalizing function (Fisher's z transform) in the coherence estimated between a random and a periodic signal was also evaluated and normality has been nearly achieved. However, the variance was less equalized in comparison with coherence estimate between two Gaussian signals.     

Statistical relationships between corresponding authorship,international co-authorship and citation impact of national research systems

This paper presents a statistical analysis of the relationship between three science indicators applied in earlier bibliometric studies, namely research leadership based on corresponding authorship, international collaboration using international co-authorship data, and field-normalized citation impact. Indicators at the level of countries are extracted from the SIR database created by SCImago Research Group from publication records indexed for Elsevier’s Scopus. The relationship between authorship and citation-based indicators is found to be complex, as it reflects a country’s phase of scientific development and the coverage policy of the database. Moreover, one should distinguish a genuine leadership effect from a purely statistical effect due to fractional counting. Further analyses at the level of institutions and qualitative validation studies are recommended.     

Trauma symptoms among infants exposed to intimate partner violence

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether infants have a traumatic response to intimate partner violence (male violence toward their female partner; IPV) experienced by their mothers, two questions were explored: (1) Is the number of infant trauma symptoms related to the infant's temperament and the mother's mental health? (2) Does severity of violence moderate those relationships? METHODOLOGY: Forty-eight mothers reported whether their 1-year-old infants experienced trauma symptoms as a result of witnessing episodes of IPV during their first year of life. Mothers also reported on their own trauma symptoms that resulted from experiences of IPV. RESULTS: For those infants experiencing severe IPV and whose mothers exhibit trauma symptoms, we were able to predict whether infants exhibited trauma symptoms (b = .53, p < .01). This was not true for children who witnessed less severe IPV (b= -.14, ns). Maternal depressive symptoms and difficult infant temperament did not predict infant trauma symptoms for either group of infants. CONCLUSION: Mothers report that infants as young as 1-year-old can experience trauma symptoms as a result of hearing or witnessing IPV. The significant relationship between infant and maternal trauma symptoms, especially among those infants experiencing severe IPV, are consistent with the theory of relational PTSD. Findings suggest that interventions for mothers and families need to consider the influence of the severity of IPV on very young children.     

Providing ability to probability: Reducing cognitive load through worked‐out examples

Undergraduate students tend to struggle with probability in their introductory statistics course. Probability problem solving requires several steps. First, students must make sense of the probability scenario, then determine the appropriate probability rules, and finally, execute the procedures to solve the problem. With no previous exposure to probability, this presents too great a cognitive load for many students. Using worked‐out problems then transitioning to partially worked‐out problems in an introductory statistics course at a large university helped students succeed at solving probability problems. The worked‐out problems included writing prompts to encourage self‐explanation of students' thinking through studying the worked‐out examples. This paper explains the use of these instructional principles and their implementation in an introductory statistics course for non‐STEM majors, resulting in higher student achievement and understanding.