Research Publications
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Publication Open Access Impact of Health Beliefs on Preventative and Coping Behaviours in Sri Lankans with Chronic Illness during Covid-19(Faculty of Humanities and Sciences, SLIIT, 2022-11-01) Weerasinghe, W. A. S. A.; Akuretiya, S.Non-adherence to health regulations during the Covid-19 pandemic has been associated with health beliefs. The present study investigates the impact of these health beliefs on preventative health behaviours and coping behaviours. The research followed an ex-post facto survey design and convenience sampling was used to recruit a sample of 100 Sri Lankans with chronic illnesses. Data collection was carried out online using the Health Beliefs and Preventative Behaviour questionnaire and the Brief Cope Inventory. The multiple regression analyses reveals that the regression model with health beliefs of perceived barriers, perceived self-efficacy, and cues to action was a significantly useful predictor explaining 50% of the variance in preventative health behaviours. The findings revealed no significant associations between perceived severity, susceptibility, and benefits with preventative health behaviours. Educational level and marital status moderate the relationship between self-efficacy, cues to action and preventative health behaviours. In fact, self-efficacy is positively and significantly correlated with adaptive coping but not significantly correlated with maladaptive coping behaviour. Overall, the findings highlight the utility of reducing barriers, enhancing self-efficacy, and promoting health literacy through education and provision of social support, especially spousal support, to foster adherence to preventative health behaviours.Publication Embargo Impact of Health Beliefs on Covid-19 Related Preventative Health Behaviours and Coping Behaviours(Faculty of Humanities and Sciences, SLIIT, 2022-09-15) Weerasinghe, W.A.S; Akuretiya, SNon-adherence to health regulations during the Covid-19 pandemic has been associated with health beliefs. Thus the present study studies the impact of these health beliefs on preventative health behaviours and coping behaviours. The research followed an ex-post facto survey design and convenience sampling was used to recruit a sample of 100 Sri Lankans with chronic illnesses. Data collection was carried out online using Google forms. The multiple regression analyses reveals that the Health Belief Model was a significantly useful predictor explaining 53% of the variation in preventative health behaviours. The findings reveal no significant predictive relationships between the health beliefs of perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, and perceived benefits with preventative health behaviours. Perceived barriers are found to significantly and negatively predict preventative health behaviours. Perceived selfefficacy and cues to action are found to significantly and positively predict preventative health behaviours. Educational level and marital status moderate the relationship between self-efficacy, cues to action and preventative health behaviours. In fact, selfefficacy is positively and significantly correlated with adaptive coping but not significantly correlated with maladaptive coping behaviour. Overall, the findings highlight the utility of reducing barriers, enhancing self-efficacy, and promoting health literacy through education and provision of social support, especially spousal support, to foster adherence to preventative health behaviours.Publication Embargo Modeling Weekly Covid Data in Europe and Sri Lanka: Time Series Approach(Faculty of Humanities and Sciences, SLIIT, 2022-09-15) Jayakody, J. A. P. ANovel Corona Virus, commonly known as COVID-19 has become a global threat affecting more than 200 countries up to date. Still a vaccine that can assure of hundred percent prevention has not been discovered. All the countries are currently following WHO guidelines such as lockdowns and social distancing. This study was conducted to develop ARIMA models for COVID-19 data in Europe and Sri Lanka and validate the models. For both these regions, number of COVID-19 cases were collected considering for a period of one year in which the first real wave happened. ACF and PACF plots were used to identify the stationarity, and out of the results possible ARIMA models were developed for the two regions separately. For Europe, the best fitted model was ARIMA (0, 2, 1) and for Sri Lanka, the best fitted model was ARIMA (1,1,0). The models were evaluated using AIC criteria. The errors of the models were found to be white noise. The forecasted values that were obtained from the model showed an increase of cases in Europe and a constant flow in Sri Lanka.Publication Embargo Study on the factors that influence parental attitude and involvement in children's home learning: An exploratory study(Faculty of Humanities and Sciences, SLIIT, 2022-09-15) Wijesingha, A.W.K.G.; Ranasuriya, L.H.D.L.Due to the sudden closure of schools during the Covid-19 pandemic, parents were required to promote home learning in order to support their children's online learning. As a result, the quality of online learning activities provided to primary school students is dependent on parental participation. Thus, this research focuses on studying the extent to which parental factors influence the management of home learning for students. The study adopted a descriptive research design and used a purposive sampling technique to select the respondents. The data was collected using a self-administered questionnaire and semistructured interviews were distributed among the sample of students (n = 30) and parents (n = 20) whose children are studying in primary classes at a school in the district of Rathnapura, Sri Lanka. In the questionnaires, participants were asked to rate how much they agreed with the statements on a five-point Likert scale, ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’. The quantitative data was statistically analyzed using charts and graphs, while the qualitative data was analyzed using content analysis. This study found that parents' awareness, education level, and socioeconomic background have a significant impact on children’s home learning. The findings suggest that seminars, training programs, and workshops for parents would help enhance the knowledge and skills related to home learning.Publication Embargo Contact Tracing Of Covid-19 Patients Using Tweets(IEEE, 2022-02-23) Perera, D; Bamunusinghe, JCovid-19 has had an impact on everyone’s lives in the recent past. Presently the field of healthcare uses social media as a tool for professional education and communication. The benefits and drawbacks of these networks have been widely discussed in different research papers. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the biggest problem that the government is facing is identifying the close contacts of the Covid-19 patients. Most of the people avoid revealing the truth about the places they visit and people they met in the recent past to the Covid-19 controlling bodies. But people use social media in their day to day life to post/ share their life experiences. Some people use twitter to share their experiences related to Covid-19. In this research paper we focus on tracing the Covid-19 close contacts using tweets. The proposed approach creates a dataset using a twitter API and filters the covid-19 positive users using sentimental analysis. After filtered positive users from the dataset, we have used a set of keywords to filter individual users’ tweets and then we have applied name entity recognition to identify the connected people and places. After gathering each tweet user’s information, we have visualized the relevant relationships of each close contact in a network diagram. Our proposed model indicates 75% accuracy by tracing down Covid-19 positive users and close contacts.Publication Open Access DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND HARASSMENT AMONG YOUNG WOMEN DURING THE PANDEMIC SITUATION IN SRI LANKA(Faculty of Management Studies, Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka, 2021-12-16) Michael, K; Vijayan, K; Selvam, M; Liyanage, W. R; Dunuwila, V; Navodika, KDomestic Violence and Harassments are human rights violations that harm survivors. Although both men and women are impacted, and severity of domestic violence and abuse is substantially higher among women. The World Health Organization has estimated that one-third of women worldwide will experience domestic violence and harassment during their lifetime. The aim of this study is to investigate violence and harassment among young women in Sri Lanka, and sub-objectives are to explore the prevalence of violence and harassment among young women in Sri Lanka. This study is an exploratory investigation with a mixed approach of qualitative and quantitative analysis. For the purpose of data collection, simple random sampling and snowball sampling methods were employed. Through the qualitative approach, the factors influencing personal factors, economic factors, social factors, and relationship factors were identified by the use of past literature. In the quantitative approach, the questionnaire was distributed among 384 participants. The study recognized region, family type, husband’s education, husband’s employment, economic pressure, marital type, number of children, culture as the dimensions of domestic violence against women and awareness respectively. The findings designate personal factors, economic factors, social factors and relationship factors have significant impact on domestic violence among young women during the pandemic situation. In addition, proactive control mechanisms are proposed to control the domestic violence and harassment among young women in Sri LankaPublication Open Access Online education during Covid-19 lockdown-Student experience in the non-state higher education in Sri Lanka(National Science Foundation, 2020) Wijesundara, M; Peiris, T. S, G; Thanaraj, T; Peiris, C. NThe objective of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness of online education in both teaching and learning, based on data captured from the Moodle LMS, Eduscope Lecture Video Management System and two students’ feedback surveys at the Sri Lanka Institute of Technology (SLIIT) from January to December 2020. Regression analysis and chi-square test were used as data analyses tools. The data were analyzed using simple linear regression and Analysis of LMS data showed that with each user logging into LMS 3 to 4 times a day with a minimum of 10 user actions per login. The study also found that the percentage of ‘satisfactory’ ratings by students for all aspects considered under four criteria, namely lecture delivery, technology, support services and overall satisfaction exceeded 80% irrespective of the faculty and time of the year. However the students’ responses for individual criteria within four aspects were significantly associated (p < 0.05) by the nature of the faculty. More than 75% of students claimed that the online delivery is working well and enabling them to continue with their studies. No significant difference was found with respect to overall satisfaction by the students between the two periods. The inferences of this study can be used effectively to provide better online education environment in higher education organizations in Sri Lanka. and The infrastructure upgrades, including overall bandwidth, new services including Zoom, Webex and MS Teams, staff training on online delivery enabled a quick transition to online delivery. The incorporation of Respondus lockdown browser and Respondus Monitor online proctoring system further enhanced the integrity of online assessments and examinations.Publication Open Access Impact of online learning efficiency on students' satisfaction and commitment during Covid-19–A concept paper(University of Jaffna, 2021) Ranadewa, D. U. N; Gregory, T. Y; Boralugoda, D. N; Silva, J. A. H. T; Jayasuriya, N. ADue to the fast-spreading of Covid-19, many countries worldwide have closed their higher educational institutes and universities(UNESCO, 2020) and shifted towards online learning methods to continue the education delivery without detaining (Duraku & Hoxha, 2020). The study focuses on analyzing the efficiency of online learning under academic issues, accessibility issues, technological skills of the students, mental well-being of the students, lecturer commitment, and how those will impact on satisfaction and commitment of the students and presents a conceptual framework with the use of empirical studies. Approximately 40 empirical studies have been reviewed for the paper using the keywords. The paper's findings include several gaps related to online learning efficiency during Covid-19: how the academic issues, accessibility issues, technological skills, mental well-being, and lecturer commitment impacted students’ satisfaction and commitment to online learning. Based on the gaps and the findings, the conceptual framework and hypotheses are developed. The researchers directly collect the primary data through a google-form questionnaire that will be used for the study. The questionnaire will be distributed using social media platforms: the undergraduates of government and private sector universities in Sri Lanka. Hence, purposive sampling is used as the sampling strategy, and the results will be analyzed quantitatively using statistical analysis. The paper will be beneficial for future researchers for their references, for the students, and for the educational institutions to provide their students more efficient online education delivery.Publication Embargo ONLINE LEARNING DURING COVID-19: THE IMPACT ON SATISFACTION AND COMMITMENT OF LEARNERS(SLIIT Business School, 2019-12-10) Ranadewa, D.U.N.; Gregory, T.Y.; Boralugoda, D.N.; Silva, J.A.H.T.; Jayasuriya, N.A.The deadly Covid virus has impacted education across the world to temporarily close the educational institutes and shift towards online learning methods (Dhawan, 2020). The educational system in Sri Lanka usually follows the traditional method of in-class learning. Due to the fast-spreading Covid-19 and the government rule imposed on social distancing, the universities across the country facilitated the online delivery of lectures through their learning management systems (Hayashi et al., 2020). Due to this shift, the learners faced several consequences regarding academics, accessibility, and lecturers' commitment. Referring to empirical studies, the study points out how those consequences impacted students' satisfaction and commitment worldwide. Limited empirical studies have been conducted to test the online learning efficiency with regards to learner satisfaction and commitment. Hence, the study aims to investigate whether there is a significant impact between those consequences and students' satisfaction and commitment in the Sri Lankan context. The target population included undergraduates in state and non-state universities in Sri Lanka. The sample size was 384, and the method applied was purposive sampling. The Googleform questionnaire was distributed among the sample, and the results were analysed quantitatively using SPSS and AMOS software, following the multiple linear regression method. The results demonstrate that the academic issues, accessibility issues have a significant negative impact, and lecturer commitment has a significant positive impact on learner satisfaction, and learner satisfaction has a significant negative impact on the learner commitment, proving that learners are less satisfied and less committed to online learning. Considering the originality, this is one of the pioneer studies conducted to identify the impact of online learning on the satisfaction and commitment of Sri Lankan undergraduates during the Covid-19 pandemic. The findings would be favourable for the learners, lecturers, future researchers, universities, and other educational institutes in making solutions to enhance learner satisfaction and commitment.Publication Embargo COVID-19 MODIFYING THE DYNAMICS OF FINANCIAL REPORTING: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY(SLIIT Business School, 2019-12-10) Nagendrakumar, N.; Lokeshwara, A.A.; Naresh, R.; Abeywickrama, D.P.; Hewaarachchi, S.H.; Edirisinghe, A.M.I.E.The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced many business sectors worldwide, including the Accounting and Finance reporting perspectives. This motivated the researchers to investigate how the pandemic has affected the financial reporting of listed companies in the Sri Lankan context. It was evidenced that the empirical studies on the influence of COVID-19 on corporate financial reports based on accounting standards and techniques are still in the beginning stages; therefore, this paper sets the foundation in bridging the existing knowledge gap by examining how Covid-19 has modified the dynamics of financial reporting. This study is exploratory in nature, and the researchers adopted interpretivism philosophy and have used an inductive approach in conducting the research. The case study method was adapted, where in-depth and semi-structured interviews were applied to collect data. The study population is one hundred and fifty-eight (158) companies consisting of six (6) sectors: Banking, Materials, Consumer services, Diversified financials, Capital goods, and Telecommunication in Colombo Stock Exchange, out of which seven (7) sub-cases were chosen under the purposive sampling technique and the collected data were analyzed on thematic procedures using the Wordcloud analysis tool. Based on the findings, it was revealed that reporting aspects of different sectors were influenced differently by COVID- 19. LKAS 1(Going concern), LKAS 2 (Inventory), LKAS 16 (Cost of depreciation), SLFRS 13 (Fair value measurement) are a few of the standards generally mentioned by the respondents. The result of this study contributes to filling the existing knowledge gap and will be a value addition to contemporary academia.