The Nigerian Civil Registration and Vital Statistics System: Contexts,Institutions, Operation

Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) Systems are playing increasing roles in national and global data infrastructure, facilitating the achievement of key developmental goals. The performance of CRVS systems in many developing countries including Nigeria is sub optimal and information on their structure and operations scanty. This paper characterizes the statutory, institutional, and operational elements and social contexts of the Nigerian CRVS System. It includes a context analysis of the system and a review of improvement strategies and interventions. The paper shows that the Nigerian CRVS System is built on viable statutory and institutional platforms—the constitutional enshrinement of: universal, compulsory and continuous civil registration and, a central registration institution—the National Population Commission (NPC). NPC has registration hierarchy and infrastructure deployed at every level of political administration and mechanisms for efficient coordination of registration and production of vital statistics on live-births, deaths and stillbirths amongst other vital events. The major weaknesses of the system include inadequate financing and deployment of registration facilities, conflicting statutes and institutional arrangements for the registration of key events like death and stillbirths. Other weaknesses include intra-organizational conflicts in resource allocation and weak ICT infrastructure within the NPC. These are compounded by overarching contextual issues namely registration unfriendly sociocultural norms, weak national data infrastructure, systemic corruption, poverty and undeveloped civic culture. Domestic initiatives and interventions to improve the system have focused on birth registration, while multilateral interventions have only made a modest impact on the system. Thus, holistic in-country improvement initiatives supported with robust interventions are imperative to overcome weaknesses in the Nigerian CRVS system. However fundamental improvements in CRVS systems in developing countries like Nigeria may likely only follow sustainable solutions to overarching contextual issues especially poor infrastructure, weak institutions, poverty and systemic corruption.     

Data for the Sustainable Development Goals: Metrics for Evaluating Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Systems Data Relevance and Production Capacity,Illustrations with Nigeria

Three issues impinging on the potential use of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) data for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are analysed in the paper. These include CRVS data relevance, content and data production capacity of CRVS systems. The paper adopts a ‘data type’ approach to relevance and capacity and proposes two metrics based on a graded qualitative evaluation (GQE) methodology. One is a data-relevance metric for evaluating the relevance of CRVS data types to the SDGs. The second is a National Statistical Systems (NSS) data type production capacity metric used for evaluating the data production capacity of CRVS systems. CRVS data instrument analysis and the CRVS data production capacity are exemplified with the Nigerian CRVS system. Relevance assessment results suggest that CRVS systems can provide data relevant to 25% of the SDGs. However the SDG data contribution of CRVS depends on the ‘data type’ capacity of National CRVS systems. As the capacity assessment shows, the Nigerian CRVS system has ‘nominal’ capacity to produce all CRVS data types (fertility, mortality, migration, nuptiality and socio-economic) and ‘active’ and ‘latent’ capacities to provide data for some 21 SDG targets. However, it currently lacks ‘effective’ capacity to produce any of the data types for the SDGs. The paper has implications for goal setting and prioritization in evolving strategies to enhance the development of CRVS/NSS systems’ data capacities, especially in developing countries.     

For Us Only? Examining the Effect of Viewing Context on Black Audiences’ Perceived Influence of Black Entertainment

A host of theories including symbolic interactionism explains how media construct our social perceptions. Research suggests that stereotypes of blacks reinforce negative racial attitudes, whereas other findings suggest that blacks enjoy black media characters, even ones that may be considered stereotypical. Current research has yet to address or explain this discrepancy. The present study explores the impact of the race of co-viewers on blacks’ responses to stereotypical content in black films. An experiment was conducted where black participants viewed clips of black films with either an All black audience or a racially Mixed group with a majority white audience. Findings revealed that watching black films with white co-viewers did not influence blacks’ enjoyment or perception of bias; however, an interaction between viewing condition and influence target emerged such that when viewing among a racially Mixed audience, blacks expressed concern that portrayals in the film would negatively influence whites’ attitudes toward blacks and their likelihood to interact with black people more than themselves. Implications for race relations in a multicultural media landscape are discussed.     

Effects of Partnership Quality,Talent Management,and Global Mindset on Performance of Offshore IT Service Providers in India

This paper investigates the effects of partnership quality, talent management and global mindset on the performance of offshore service providers (OSPs) in the information technology sector in India. The findings show that partnership quality has partial and strong mediation effects on the impact of talent management and global mindset on performance of OSPs. We also find that talent management strongly mediates the effects of global mindset on partnership quality. Overall, the results confirm that global mindset, by itself, has limited direct influence on the performance of OSPs and that the full benefits of global mindset can only be enjoyed by OSPs which have well developed talent management and high quality partnerships with their clients. The implications and limitations of the study are also discussed.