Impact of Personality Traits and Socio-Demographic Factors on Depression among Doctors and Nurses

The workplace is not immune to conflict and stress, specifically when fulfilling people's responsibilities at great personal costs. Doctors and nurses are always on the frontline in hospitals, vaulting from one stressful high-stakes situation to the next. The HEXACO model of personality traits: Honesty-humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness, has long been hypothesized to be a major predicting factor when determining individuals' responses to stress and susceptibility to experiencing depression. Most research suggests that personality traits resonate with a person's cognitive abilities and how they can deal with stress and depression. However, there is a lack of research on their correlation to depression severity in the Middle East. The current study aimed to investigate the impact of HEXACO personality traits and socio-demographic factors on depression amongst doctors and nurses. A sample of 170 doctors and nurses (62.1% doctors) completed HEXACO-60 and PHQ-9 depression severity questionnaires. The data were analyzed through descriptive statistics, independent samples t-test, ANOVA, correlation, and regression analysis. The findings showed that Honesty-humility was the strongest predictor, while extraversion was the second strongest. Emotionality had the least impact on depression. The relationship between Agreeableness and Openness to Experience with depression was insignificant. However, gender, age, working hours, and work experience were significant predictors of depression. Marital status and level of specialization were insignificant predictors. Thus, it was concluded that not all HEXACO traits and socio-demographics predict depression. Study findings could be utilized in the implementation of employee recruitment, job crafting, positive psychology, and coaching.

Law Enforcement Officers’ Reaction on Traditional Crimes to Fight Cybercrime Locally

Cybercrime has become one of the fastest-growing concerns for law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, and municipal levels. This qualitative case study examined the perceptions of nine law enforcement officers from Texas regarding combating cybercrime at the local level. The study focuses on how do law enforcement officers who respond to traditional crimes describe law enforcement agencies’ preparedness to fight cybercrime locally. Data collection consisted of semistructured interviews, where member-checking helped to enhance trustworthiness. The results from this study helped fill the gap in the literature regarding the unknown perceptions of law enforcement officers responding to cybercrimes at the local level. This study also focused on the behaviors of the participants regarding responding to cybercrimes. Participants indicated that law enforcement agencies take cybercrime seriously; however, cybercrimes are not a high priority for law enforcement at the local level. Participants also provided challenges that local law enforcement agencies face in cybercrime investigations locally.

Does Nigeria Non-Renewable Resource Abundance Leads to Macroeconomic Performance? A Trend Analysis (1970-2014)

Theoretically, natural resource abundance is expected to create national wealth; however, the inconclusiveness in the literature and among the African rich resources motivated this study. Our paper investigated that does Nigeria's non-renewable resource abundance leads to sustainable macroeconomic performance? To achieve the objectives of this study, our paper employs descriptive trends analysis, using tables and charts to measure the relationship between the non-renewable resource abundance, proxied as oil and gas variables, and the selected macroeconomic variables to draw an inference within the study period of 1970 – 2014 in Nigeria. In summary, our study concludes that an inverse relationship exists between non-renewable resource abundance and macroeconomic performance in Nigeria for the covered period 1970 – 2014. Therefore, our study conforms to the existing studies of Sachs & Warner, 2001; Gylfasson, 2005, VanPloeg and Venables, 2013 that African rich-resources countries, including Nigeria, a non-renewable resource abundance retards macroeconomic performance within the period of study. Nonetheless, this study recommends that government should consistently endeavor to increase the proportion of education expenditure to total expenditure as well as same for capital expenditure to total expenditure, and finally, transform the economy from an oil-dependent economy to a non-oil driven economy, that is diversification of the economy, which would change the non-renewable resource-abundant nation from curse to blessing and thus, guarantee sustainable macroeconomic performance in Nigeria.

Bank Specific and Macroeconomic Determinants of Commercial Bank Performance in Bangladesh

The main purpose of this study is to examine the impacts of bank-specific and macroeconomic factors on the commercial bank performance measures (ROA, NIM, and ROE in this case) in Bangladesh. The study identifies bank-specific characteristics and macroeconomic determinants of performance in Bangladesh’s banking sector over the years 2009 to 2018. The study uses relevant data from a sample of 10 commercial banks in Bangladesh. The determinants are identified by using correlation and regression analysis. This finding serves as an indicator that the bank-specific and macroeconomic variables selected for this study provide a better description of ROA rather than net interest margin (NIM) and ROE. Among all the bank-specific determinants board size, audit committee meetings, and foreign ownership have a positive relationship with the bank’s performance. Specifically, inflation and GDP are observed to have a positive relationship with bank performance. The findings of this research can be of great help to a wide range of entities such as academicians, bankers, the government, students, and investors. This study can be helpful to bank management by providing valuable information thus assisting in the construction of efficient management policy decisions in order to ensure higher profits.

The Effect of Pre-Class Assignment in Enhancing the Chinese National-Type School Pupils in Mastery Chinese Language

The KSSR curriculum system introduced by Malaysia's ministry of education is demanding teachers to build pupils who will have the ability to carry out the learning process independently. To build pupils with the ability to learn independently, the pre-class assignment is an implementation needed to give the learning autonomy back to pupils. However, some of the teachers do not like students to do any pre-class assignment because they are afraid that students who have already obtained a certain level of understanding towards the learning materials would feel boring and show the signs of being not interested to listen during the in-class learning process. Thus, this study aims to study the effect of pre-class assignments in enhancing the Chinese language reading comprehension mastery level of pupils from Chinese national-type schools in order to convince more educators to start practicing the use of pre-class assignments. A group of 260 pupils from eight different schools in Kuala Lumpur was involved in this study. A quantitative approach was used in this study and tests were developed and used in this study. The result of this study showed that the implementation of pre-class assignments was effective in helping pupils to master Chinese language reading comprehension. The finding of this research showed that the pupils' performance in Chinese language reading comprehension was not affected by the language used at home and prior exposure of pupils towards pre-class assignments.

Socio-economic Conditions of Flood Affected People of Northern Districts in Bangladesh

In 2017, the death toll from floods sweeping in northern areas of Bangladesh has climbed above 150. In Dinajpur, Rangpur, Lalmonirhat, Kurigram and Thakurgaon more than 57.18 lakh people have been affected by flood and 6.11 lakh hectares of land damaged by floods in 32 districts Flood is an important natural disaster that deeply destroys the infrastructure and socio-economic conditions of the area. After the flood, the flood victims are feeling very unlucky. Their crops are totally destroyed. They are uncertain about their future. They do not know what would be happened in tomorrow. This study is conducted to find out the real situations of the flood victims of the said areas. The primary objective of this study is to provide a review of the socio-economic conditions of flood-affected people of northern districts in Bangladesh. To develop the paper, primary as well as secondary data is used. The quantitative, as well as qualitative analysis, is conducted for the study. Primary data is collected through a set of well-structured questionnaires. To collect the primary data, a personal survey method is used. Computerized modern technology is applied in the coding, tabulating, and processing of data. The victims are asked for their perceptions of life. It reveals that no victim is extremely pleased with their life before and after the flood, and 35% of victims were pleased before the flood, but after the flood, that rate is reduced to 8%. On the other hand, 5% of victims were extremely displeased, but after the flood that is increased to 17%. Floods have huge consequences on people, economics, and the environment. Flooding of regions used for socioeconomic activities produces a variety of negative effects. The government has various programs for food, housing, medical, and education but that is not enough. It is very little than the affected people. Providing adequate support for flood-affected people and preventing floodwaters can save the people of the river basin. It is also revealed that, by solving some problems locally, some nationally, and some internationally, it is possible to fill the lives of flood-affected people with laughter and joy.

The Relationship between Bank Specific Characteristics and the Extent of Disclosure: Evidence from the Banking Sector in Bangladesh

The fundamental motive of this study is to inspect the extent of disclosure of the banking companies in Bangladesh. To calculate the disclosure score of each sample bank, the un-weighted disclosure index has been used. To reveal the findings of this study, researchers have considered five conventional private commercial banks. A period of five years ranging from 2013 to 2017 has been selected for the study. Data have been collected from secondary sources and different statistical techniques like descriptive statistics as well as regression analysis with the respective models have been employed. The study reveals that the average disclosures scores of the sample banks are at a satisfactory level and the significant variation doesn’t exist in the disclosure scores among the sample banks. Multiple regression analysis has been conducted to know whether the significant relationship is available between the extent of disclosure and the specific characteristics of banks and the evidence confirm that the significant relationship is existing between the extent of disclosure and earnings per share, return on assets as well as net profit but not between the disclosure scores and capital adequacy ratio, debt-equity ratio, current ratio, loan deposit ratio, market capitalization ratio as well as total assets.

Development of Wholesale and Retail Trade, Repair of Motor Vehicles and Motorcycles Business in Rangpur Division

Bangladesh has already become a middle-income country. Yet its large number of working people is still jobless. The importance of Wholesale, Retail, Motor-vehicle workshop, and Motorcycle businesses (WRMB) for solving employment problems in a short time is immense. WRMB can pave the way for the employment of these people. There are eighteen types of manufacturing and service activity in the small-scale industry (SSI) sector. Out of this WRMB activity sector holds the height contribution in number. This paper attempts to discover the present situation of the Growth and Development of the Wholesale, Retail, Motor-vehicle workshops, and Motorcycle businesses in the Rangpur Division of Bangladesh during 2013-14 to 2017-18. The study is empirical. Both the primary and secondary data have been used in this study. Primary data is collected from 200 wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles, and motorcycles activity. The study found a simple correlation between financial conditions of the WRMB with the three dependent variables `net sales 2013-14’, `net sales 2017-18’, and `average net sales’.

Optimization of Bike Routes for Sustainable Urban Road Network

The transport department of urban cities always needs to keep abreast of sustainable developments such as in Port Said city that is an important urban city in Egypt. Bike routes planning mission is not an easy occupation, especially in developing countries. Mixed traffic is the main shape of the transportation system in most of their systems. The increase of the bike user's percent is an expected objective and be one of the modern sustainable transport solutions. On another side, a lot of problems and accidents had been occurred according to bike crossings among other transport vehicles; cars, buses, taxis, and others. This paper aims at studying the introduction of the bike route's effectiveness. It concludes the driver's reaction to a definite planning scenario and the optimistic effect of the modal change on the objective function that has been assumed by attaching a suitable time-saving for bike users using the Artificial Neural Network ANNs Approach. It shows the effect of bike speed change on the route using a greedy algorithm. The study designated only four streets from seven selected streets to be suitable routes for bike routes introduction. The average bike speed is predicted to increase from 1.5 km per hour to be 2.4 km per hour after introducing the bike routes.

On the Relationship between Education Reforms and Sustainable Development: Evidence from Nigeria

Nigeria between 1980 and 2018 shows a mixed relationship between education reforms and sustainable development. In 2016, over 45 percent of Nigerian graduates are unemployed and about a 39.4 percent increase in education enrolment rate had resulted in stagnated economic sustainable development in Nigeria. Following the endogenous growth theory and the environmental Kuznets hypothesis underpinnings, this study investigated the cause and effect of education reforms and sustainable development in Nigeria between 1980 and 2018. The descriptive statistics employed describe the data distribution of the included variables while the vector error correction model (VECM) econometric technique was used to determine the short-run and long-run impact of education reforms on economic, social, and environmentally sustainable development in Nigeria. The results found that qualitative education reform has a positive impact on economic and environmentally sustainable development while quantitative education has a negative impact on socially sustainable development in the long run. Further, the short-run, VECM results revealed that qualitative education reforms will speedily affect economic, social, and environmentally sustainable development than the quantitative education reforms within the period of study. The study recommends that quantity and quality education reforms should be seen as complementary and not a substitute in achieving sustainable development by the year 2030 in Nigeria.