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Influence of selected cultural norms on educational attainment among kipsigis women in Bomet East Sub[1] County, Bomet County, Kenya: a historical perspective
(Chuka University, 2025) Chepkoech, Iven
Women’s educational attainment is crucial for promoting gender equality, improving health outcomes, and fostering economic development within families and communities. Educated women are more likely to participate in decision-making, access better job opportunities, and invest in the education and well-being of future generations. Despite the critical benefits of women's educational attainment, cultural norms often influence the extent to which women can access and complete their education. Government of Kenya has initiated various programs and policies aimed at enhancing women’s educational attainment and promoting inclusive, equitable access to learning opportunities. In spite of the interventions by the government of Kenya to improve women educational attainment, women educational attainment is still low as compared to that of men. This study aimed to determine the influence of selected cultural norms on Kipsigis women in Bomet East sub-county, Bomet County, Kenya. The study was guided by four objectives; to determine the influence of gender roles, marriage practices, rites of passage and parental perception on women educational attainment. The study was guided by two theories namely; structural functionalism theory and liberal feminism theory. Historical research design was adopted for the study. The study population was 7,081 participants consisting of 7,056 women in the four age sets according to the Kipsigis customs, 5 chiefs, 10 educationists and 10 elderly persons in Bomet East Sub- County. A sample size of 125 comprising of 5 chiefs, 5 females and 5 male educationists, 5 female and 5 male elderly persons 100 women distributed proportionately in the four Age set in the five locations of Bomet East Sub County was selected for this study. Data was collected using interviews presented to chiefs, elderly persons and educationists, while focus group discussions was used to collect data from women in various age sets. Piloting was done in Bomet Central sub county because it has similar characteristics and environment to the study. Reliability of the instruments was ascertained through pilot testing the interviews or focus group question. The instruments were validated using face and content validity while reliability was ascertained by subjecting data obtained from a pilot study to Cronbach's alpha reliability analysis, 0.7 reliability coefficient and above being the accepted threshold. Content validity of the research ascertained by expert judgment from the faculty of education and resource development while face validity was ascertained through use of appropriate line spacing, font size and logical arrangement of information. Qualitative data was analyzed basing on the themes. The findings of the study showed that marriage practices, gender roles, rites of passage and parental perception influence women’s participation in education. It was established that marriage practices, gender roles, rites of passage and parental perception have a significant influence on women’s educational attainment. The study recommends that education stakeholders sensitize communities on the importance of balancing household roles with girls’ education through awareness campaigns and community dialogue, enforce strict measures against practices such as female genital mutilation, early and forced marriages by engaging local authorities, elders, and religious leaders and launch community education programs highlighting the long-term benefits of educating girls for families and the society at large.
Representations of the african american experience through yoruba mythology: an analysis of tomi adeyemi’s Trilogy LEGACY OF ORISHA.
(Chuka University, 2025) Kobia,Eva Nkatha
Myth is the repository of the values of the society, and the writer who seeks to interpret his society must of necessity be concerned with myth. Various approaches have been adopted in
the criticism of African American literature over time, including the empathy inherent in slave autobiographies, the sentimentalism of the abolitionist literature, black pride of the Harlem
renaissance, the political poetry of the civil rights movement, the Black Lives Matter movement up to the modern-day digital revolution. These approaches have been enriched
mainly by socio-political movements coupled with individual creativity. It is curious that despite having originated from Africa which has a rich heritage of oral traditions, writers and
critics of African descent have accorded little attention to the ways in which orality contributes to the black man’s experience in America. This research attempted to fill this gap by analysing
the use of Yoruba mythology in African American novels, focusing on Tomi Adeyemi’s trilogy Legacy of Orisha comprising of three texts namely Children of Blood and Bone, Children of
Virtue and Vengeance and Children of Anguish and Anarchy. Three objectives guided this study: first, to explore various Yoruba myths in the trilogy Legacy of Orisha; secondly, to
explore the nexus between these myths and African American experience in Tomi Adeyemi’s Legacy of Orisha; and finally, to analyse myth aesthetics in Tomi Adeyemi’s Trilogy of Orisha.
The myth criticism theoretical framework pioneered by Claude Levi Strauss and advanced by later critics was adopted to examine the use of African orality and synthesize relevant
mythological and diasporic issues. in the selected texts. Being qualitative in nature, the research relied on content analysis to analyse the selected novels. This study examined primary
texts through purposive sampling, selecting a trilogy published between 2018 and 2024 that prominently features mythological elements. The trilogy is authored by an African American
author and the texts are thematically rich in terms of socio-political issues. Secondary texts, including critical essays, theoretical works, and cultural studies, were systematically reviewed
using a literature review matrix to identify key scholarly debates and gaps. The findings of this study show that the author presents fantastical elements suggesting that reconnection with
ancestry can provide frameworks of resistance and identity formation. Additionally, the study reveals that the struggle over mythology is the struggle over narrative authority. Lastly, the
study reveals that African mythology presents a rich narrative and symbolic depth just like traditionally favoured western mythologies. The study contributes to the scholarship practice.
Pedagogically, the findings provide frameworks for teaching African mythology and Diasporic representations. The study provides insights for representations of myth which can be used for
the development of reading material for children. Additionally, the research offers applications for journalism materials and media production.
A pragma-semiotic analysis of communication strategies in vaccination campaigns against mpox in Kenya
(Chuka University, 2025) Chemiati, Rebecca Chemutai
The success of any public health campaign is dependent on its ability to strategically utilize various modes of communication to effectively convey complex health messages. Meaning-making in public health campaigns is dependent on the strategic integration of language and other modes of communication. Integration of these two linguistics fields provides a comprehensive understanding of how public health campaigns navigate through the complexities of effective communication in a multi cultural society. The motivation behind this study is based on the need to understand how semiotic and pragmatic elements collaboratively work to create meaning. The study focused on analysis of meanings and the functionality of speech acts in vaccination campaigns against Mpox in Kenya. This study adopted a descriptive research design guided by the Multimodal Theory by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen and John Searle’s Theory of Speech Act. The study population comprised all publicly available communicative materials used in the vaccination campaigns against Mpox in Kenya. Purposive sampling was used to identify campaign materials that possess linguistic elements only relevant to the study. A total of thirty campaign materials were sampled. However, the final sample size was dependent on the point of
saturation. The data was sourced from official websites of institutions of public health and digital media platforms. An integrated pragma-semiotic approach was utilized during data analysis where visuals were classifieds as icons, indexes and symbols to examine their communicative functions while speech acts were analysed according to Searle (1976). This document is made up of six chapters; chapter one, two and three comprise the introduction, literature review and research methodology respectively. Chapter four highlights meanings in vaccination campaigns against Mpox in Kenya. The study finds that the campaigns made use of various semiotic resources such as icons, indexes, symbols, spatial arrangements, layouts and colour schemes which carried multiple meanings. The icon of a vaccine bottle for instance connotates hope through the administration of the vaccine which is a lifesaving substance. This reinforces the idea that the relevant authorities are concerned with the protection and preservation of life. Symbolically, this icon is a representation of defence and immunity.Chapter five engages speech acts in vaccination campaigns against Mpox in Kenya. The findings of the pragmatic analysis reveal the use of five types of speech acts as categorized by Searle (1976) and hierarchical structuring which operate as complex illocutionary arrangements. Chapter six contains the summary of findings, conclusions and recommendations. This study has validated that the union of pragmatic and semiotic elements in the campaigns against Mpox generated an integrative communicative power which not only informed the population regarding Mpox pandemic but also advocated certain preventive methods, primarily vaccination among high-risk groups. The study demonstrates how verbal and visual elements interact dynamically to produce persuasive messages that impact behaviour change. This study advances the theoretical frameworks utilized by demonstrating how various illocutionary acts are reinforced and modulated through semiotic resources to inform, create awareness and promote vaccination uptake. It bridges the gap between theory and applied communication practices. The integration thus provides a comprehensive understanding of the process of meaning-making. It offers insight on the role of communication strategies in the design of more effective public health campaigns.
Factors influencing the uptake of tuberculosis preventive therapy among nurses and midwives in tier 2 - 4 public health facilities in Imenti North Sub-County, Kenya
(Chuka University, 2025) Kiambi, Nancy Kendi
Occupational exposure to tuberculosis puts nurses at a higher risk of contracting the disease. To mitigate this risk, tuberculosis preventive therapy (TPT) is recommended for healthcare workers who have not yet progressed to TB disease. However, despite the high risk and the availability of the drugs, TPT uptake remains below the expected level, particularly in Kenya where the burden of TB is significant. This study investigated factors influencing TPT uptake among nurses and midwives in tier 2-4 public facilities in Imenti North Sub- County, Meru County, Kenya. Specifically, the study examined the uptake of TPT and identified both health facility and individual related factors that influenced TPT uptake. The study employed an analytical crosssectional survey design. A total of 154 nurses and midwives were selected from among 215 nurses and midwives via stratified random sampling method. Quantitative data were gathered through a self-administered, semi-structured questionnaire developed by the researcher. Qualitative data was collected through eleven key informant interviews with the nursing service managers purposively selected from the facilities where the study was undertaken. Pre-testing of the study instruments was conducted in Tigania East, Mikinduri sub- county hospital among 15 nurses. Quantitative data was manually cleaned and analyzed using Statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 29.0. Descriptive statistics among them mean, standard deviation, frequency and percentages were used in summarizing the data. Chi-square and multivariate logistic regression analysis were used to identify relationship between independent and dependent variables at 95% confidence interval. Qualitative data was transcribed verbatim from audio records and thematic analysis via NVIVO version 12.0. Results were presented through tables, figures and in narrative form. Results showed that most participants (82.8%, n=125) were from Meru teaching and Referral Hospital. The mean age of the participants was 37.03+ 8.124 and the mean years of practice was 10.17+ 7.52. About two thirds of the participants (66.2%, n=96) were female. Majority (60.9%, n-93) had a diploma in Nursing and 51.0%(n=77) were married. Most participants (97.7%, n=147) were aware of TPT and 72.8%(n=110) had good knowledge of TPT. Majority of the participants (95.4%, n=144) supported the use of TPT. Only 33.1%(n=50) of the participants had taken TPT. Among these, 46.0%(n=21) had taken Rifapentine Isoniazid and 68.9% had taken it within the last year. None of the individual related factors was significantly associated with the uptake of TPT since they had p >0.05. Among the health facility related factors, availability of policy(X2=7.729(1), p=.005) and guidelines on TPT (X2=4.457, p=.035) as well as receiving verbal instructions/ training (X2=5.121, p=.024) on TPT were significantly associated with uptake of TPT. In conclusion, the uptake of TPT among nurses and midwives was low. None of the individual related factors investigated influenced the uptake of TPT. Availability of policy and guidelines as well as receiving instructions on TPT increased the uptake. It is recommended that the ministry of health should make TPT mandatory among all the health care providers rather than voluntary and disseminate policy and guidelines on TPT to all levels of the health care additionally, more CMEs should be carried out to demystify TPT among health care workers. A large scale study involving all health care providers on factors that influence adherence to TPT is recommended.
Effect of government’s human capital expenditure on poverty rates in Kenya
(Chuka University, 2025) Musee, Amos Mutambu
Poverty remains a significant socio-economic challenge in Kenya, with approximately 36 percent of the population living below the international poverty line of $2.15 per day despite substantial government investments in human capital. This study utilized a causal research design to investigate the effect of government expenditure on education, health, and technology on poverty rates in Kenya from 1975 to 2024. Employing an Autoregressive Distributed Lag model, the study analyzed both short-run and long-run relationships, using secondary data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics and the World Development Indicators, with the Stata software used for the econometric analysis. The findings revealed a stable long-run cointegrating relationship among the variables as confirmed by the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Bounds Test. The error correction term was statistically significant at the 1 percent level, indicating a moderate speed of adjustment, with over half of short-run deviations in poverty levels corrected each year. The findings further revealed that government expenditure on education had a statistically significant poverty-reducing effect in both the long run and the short run, significant at the 1 percent and 10 percent levels respectively. Similarly, government expenditure on health demonstrated a strong and statistically significant povertyreducing impact in both the long run and the short run, each significant at the 1 percent level. In contrast, government expenditure on technology and innovation was statistically insignificant in both the short run and the long run. Overall, the model exhibited strong explanatory power with a high goodness of fit. These results underscore that increased investments in education and health significantly contribute to poverty reduction in Kenya, guiding targeted policy formulation for efficient resource allocation. Based on these findings, the study recommends enhancing both the scale and quality of government expenditures in education and health to sustain and deepen their poverty-reducing impact. Its further advocates for a strategic reorientation of technology expenditure to prioritize digital inclusivity and its integration into essential services like education and healthcare. The study also highlights areas for further study on optimizing human capital spending, particularly in the technology sector, to ensure inclusive effect on poverty alleviation.