Main Ethnic Groups In Malaysia Research Articles

Testing the validity of a new scale designed to assess beliefs and perceptions about colorectal cancer and colorectal cancer screening in Malaysia: a principal component analysis

ObjectiveTo conduct a cultural adaptation and validation of the Champion Health Belief Model Scale (CHBMS) for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening (CHBMS-CRC-M) in order to assess and investigate perceptions and beliefs...

Regional and ethnic inequalities in Malaysian poverty dynamics

Abstract This study employs a synthetic panel approach based on nationally-representative micro-level data to track poverty and income mobility in Malaysia in the period 2004–2016. On aggregate we observe large reductions in chronic poverty and increases in persistent economic security, but note that those who remain poor in 2016 are increasingly likely to be poor in a structural sense. Further, we find that poverty and income dynamics differ notably across geographic dimensions. Such disparities are most striking when we contrast affluent urban Peninsular Malaysia with poorer rural East Malaysia. Although there are important differences in welfare levels between the main ethnic groups in Malaysia, we observe that mobility trends generally point in the same direction. While our findings show that there is still scope for poverty reduction through the reduction of inter-ethnic inequalities, we underscore the importance of taking regional inequalities into greater account when it comes to ensuring a fairer distribution of socioeconomic opportunities for poor and vulnerable Malaysians. Hence, addressing chronic poverty is likely to require additional attention to less developed geographic areas, as a complement to the largely ethnicity-based policies that have historically played a dominant role.

Comparing Elicitation Methods of Risk Preferences in Personal Financial Planning: A Field Experiment among Working Adults in Malaysia

Risk preference is an important input in designing investment types or port-folios in personal finance. Although there are many reported risk elicitation methods, the risk preference measure obtained from these methods has not been associated with any behavioural or psychological reasons underlying the choices made. This association is important in providing the underlying theoretical understanding of risk preferences and establishing the robustness of a measure. The present paper attempted to test the consistency of risk preferences between two widely used elicitation methods: Grable and Lytton (1999, 2003) risk tolerance score and probability weighting function in prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Tversky & Kahneman, 1992). The risk score captures the self-reported willingness to engage in risky investment, and the probability weighting function shows overweighting or underweighting of the probability. We conducted a series of field experiments involving working adults of three main ethnic groups in Malaysia. The results showed consistency in risk preferences between the two methods: high willingness to engage in risk was complemented by optimistic probability weighting, and respondents with low willingness to engage in risky investment evaluated high probability more favourably. The study is useful to financial professionals when implementing the questionnaire to measure risk preferences.

Lagu Malaysia Truly Asia Sentuhan Ahmad Nawab: Sebuah Penjenamaan Bangsa Berakarkan Rumpun Nusantara

Since 1972, Tourism Malaysia has been making efforts at branding Malaysia as a unique tourist destination in South East Asia. In this process, songs play a significant role. In 1999, Malaysia Truly Asia was composed by Dato’ Seri Ahmad Nawab and it became the most iconic song for the ministry's branding campaign. The song was initially recorded in English and later translated into seventeen languages for international markets. This song introduces and highlights cultural heritage musical elements of the three main ethnic groups in Malaysia: the Malays, Chinese and Indians with a touch of kompang (single-headed frame drum), Kelantan Wayang Kulit (shadow puppets) music, serunai (quadruple reed wind instrument), tabla (a pair of double-headed drums), accordion and seruling (flute). National songs represent and build kinship amongst Malaysians who associate themselves with a more ‘authority-defined’ ideology because it is based on ethno-national politics as a result of colonial legacy. This article discusses the concept of ‘nation branding' used as a marketing tool for the tourism sector of Malaysia. Any nation branding effort for Malaysia will always be infused with elements of historical heritage within the archipelago that are hybrid and shared. Symbols of historical heritage that are firmly intertwined within the performing arts culture live within the soul of Ahmad Nawab. Naturally, he embodied and imbued this into a popular song until it became accepted by many as the Malaysian identity. Keywords: Nation branding, historical heritage, hybrid history, tourism, popular songs.

Does Ethnicity Matters in Capital Structure Decision in Family Firms? Overview of Agency Theory

Drawing on the evidence indicating that prominent features of Asian companies are notably the concentrated ownership with extensive family ownership and dominance of controlling shareholders controlled by two main ethnic groups in Malaysia, namely the Chinese and the Malays, this study attempts to investigate the effect of ownership and ethnicity on the financing decisions of Malaysian family firms.

Asthma symptoms and respiratory infections in Malaysian students-associations with ethnicity and chemical exposure at home and school

Little is known on respiratory effects of indoor chemicals in the tropics. We investigated associations between asthma and respiratory infections in Malaysian students and chemical exposure at home and at school. Moreover, we investigated differences in home environment between the three main ethnic groups in Malaysia (Malay, Chinese, Indian). Totally, 462 students from 8 junior high schools in Johor Bahru participated (96% participation rate). The students answered a questionnaire on health and home environment. Climate, carbon dioxide (CO2), volatile organic compounds (VOC), formaldehyde and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) were measured inside and outside the schools. Multilevel logistic regression was applied to study associations between exposure and health. Totally 4.8% were smokers, 10.3% had wheeze, 9.3% current asthma, and had 18.8% any respiratory infection in the past 3 months. Malay students had more dampness or mould (p < 0.001), more environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) (p < 0.001) and more cats (p < 0.001) at home as compared to Chinese or Indian students. Wheeze was associated with ethnicity (p = 0.02; lower in Indian), atopy (p = 0.002), current smoking (p = 0.02) and recent indoor painting at home (p = 0.03). Current asthma was associated with ethnicity (p = 0.001; lower in Chinese) and para-dichlorobenzene in classroom air (p = 0.008). Respiratory infections were related to atopy (p = 0.002), ethylbenzene (p = 0.02) and para-dichlorobenzene (p = 0.01) in classroom air. Para-dichlorobenzene is used in Asia against insects. In conclusion, chemical emissions from recent indoor painting at home can increase the risk of wheeze. In schools, para-dichlorobenzene can increase the risk of current asthma and respiratory infections while ethylbenzene can increase the risk of respiratory infections.

Ethno Cultural Concept of Family Life in Malaysian Literature in English

A family involves two or more persons who live in the same household and are related through blood, marriage, or adoption . Family is “a social group branded by a common home, economic collaboration, and reproduction. It includes grown-ups of both genders, at least two of whom sustain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or more children, own or adopted, of the adults living together(Alakavuklar, 2009).The study is going to examine the concept of family in term of father/mother, father /children, mother/children binary opposition between three main ethnic groups in Malaysia (Malay ,Chinese ,Indian ) through Malaysian novels in English: ‘The Rice Mother', ‘Evening Is the Whole Day’, ‘Green Is the Color’, and ‘The Garden of Evening Mist’.

Communicating About Inter-Ethnic Unity: An Investigation on Differences Between Youths of the Three Main Ethnic Groups in Malaysia

In a multicultural, multi-ethnic and multireligious country such as Malaysia, inter-ethnic unity is considered both enriching to society and a challenge for government. A diverse population with variations in culture, language and religion is often perceived as difficult to govern due to the many different needs, values and expectations of different groups within a multicultural society. Malaysia is often lauded for the inter-ethnic harmony and stability of its society that allows the country to flourish economically. Though there is no violent conflict between the ethnic groups, a sense of national unity proves challenging to achieve as ethnic divides exist along political, socio-economical and geographical lines. This study was conducted to investigate how Malaysian youth participate in the conversation about inter-ethnic unity. Utilising measures of Communicative Actions in Problem Solving from the Situational Theory of Problem Solving (STOPS), a survey was distributed among 575 university students from four institutions of higher learning in the Klang Valley, Malaysia. A one-way multivariate analysis of variance was conducted to determine whether there were any differences between the three main ethnic groups on the six different communicative behaviours pertaining to the issue of inter-ethnic unity. The results showed that there were significant differences in information seeking, information forwarding and information sharing. Among these behaviours, the differences between the Malays and the Chinese were most prominent whereby the Chinese showed relatively lower levels of information seeking and sharing compared to the Malays, and lower levels of information forwarding compared to both the Malays and the Indians. Keywords: Communicative behaviour, inter-ethnic unity, Malaysia, youth, STOPS.

Clinical, biochemical and genetic profiles of patients with mucopolysaccharidosis type IVA (Morquio A syndrome) in Malaysia: the first national natural history cohort study

BackgroundMucopolysaccharidosis IVA (MPS IVA) is an autosomal recessive lysosomal storage disease due to N-acetylgalactosamine-6-sulfatase (GALNS) deficiency. It results in accumulation of the glycosaminoglycans, keratan sulfate and chondroitin-6-sulfate, leading to skeletal and other systemic impairments. Data on MPS IVA in Asian populations are scarce.MethodsThis is a multicentre descriptive case series of 21 patients comprising all MPS IVA patients in Malaysia. Mutational analysis was performed by PCR and Sanger sequencing of the GALNS gene in 17 patients.ResultsThe patients (15 females and 6 males) had a mean age (± SD) of 15.5 (± 8.1) years. Mean age at symptom onset was 2.6 (± 2.1) years and at confirmed diagnosis was 6.9 (± 4.5) years. The study cohort included patients from all the main ethnic groups in Malaysia – 57% Malay, 29% Chinese and 14% Indian. Common presenting symptoms included pectus carinatum (57%) and genu valgum (43%). Eight patients (38%) had undergone surgery, most commonly knee surgeries (29%) and cervical spine decompression (24%). Patients had limited endurance with lower mean walking distances with increasing age. GALNS gene analysis identified 18 distinct mutations comprising 13 missense, three nonsense, one small deletion and one splice site mutation. Of these, eight were novel mutations (Tyr133Ser, Glu158Valfs*12, Gly168*, Gly168Val, Trp184*, Leu271Pro, Glu320Lys, Leu508Pro). Mutations in exons 1, 5 and 9 accounted for 51% of the mutant alleles identified.ConclusionsAll the MPS IVA patients in this study had clinical impairments. A better understanding of the natural history and the clinical and genetic spectrum of MPS IVA in this population may assist early diagnosis, improve management and permit timely genetic counselling and prenatal diagnosis.

Pre-tertiary education, ethnicity, and attitudes of Asian medical undergraduates towards communication skills.

ObjectivesThis study was aimed at determining whether the pre-tertiary education system and ethnicity have any association with the attitudes of medical undergraduates towards communication skills. It also sought to determine if attitudes should have any relationship with communication skills assessment outcomes. MethodsA cross-section survey design was performed with 323 participants from two cohorts of medical undergraduates, i.e., first-year (n = 153) and second-year students (n = 170) who completed the Communication Skills Attitude Scale. Participants comprised of the main ethnic groups in Malaysia, i.e., Malays, Chinese and Indians, from different language medium pre-tertiary education backgrounds. Attitude measurements were compared with OSCE outcomes. ResultsThere was a significant difference in Negative Attitude Scale between pre-tertiary education system with attitudes towards communication skills (F (3, 319) = 7.79, p = .001), but no significant difference with Positive Attitude Scale (F (3, 319) = 0.43, p = .649). There was no significant difference between ethnicity and attitudes towards communication skills with PAS (F (2, 320) = 0.66, p = .519) and NAS (F (2, 320) = 1.24, p = .291). Students from Chinese medium education system had stronger negative attitudes with a mean score of 14.7 (n = 56, SD = 3.6) for primary school levels and 15.9 (n = 17, SD = 3.0) for secondary school levels, compared with others. There was no significant prediction of student’s attitudes towards assessments outcomes. ConclusionsPreliminary findings from the small data pool suggest indicative relationships requiring further studies with more participants and proportionate pre-tertiary education system backgrounds.

The mediating role of reciprocal filial piety in the relationship between parental autonomy support and life satisfaction among adolescents in Malaysia

This study investigated how parental autonomy support influences adolescents’ life satisfaction through the mediation effect of reciprocal filial piety. A total of 589 school-going adolescents aged between 13 and 17 years were recruited using the cluster sampling method. The results showed that both paternal and maternal autonomy supports positively correlated with reciprocal filial piety as well as life satisfaction. There was also a positive relationship between reciprocal filial piety and life satisfaction. In addition, the data supported the hypothetical mediation model in which both paternal and maternal autonomy supports are associated with reciprocal filial piety; the gratitude toward parents in turn having a positive link with life satisfaction. The indirect effect of parental support on adolescents’ life satisfaction was found evident across gender and the three main ethnic groups in Malaysia. This study not only highlights the positive effects of parental autonomy support on adolescents’ filial beliefs and life satisfaction across cultures, but also sheds light on the mechanism of parental support in boosting adolescents’ life satisfaction.

The Agenda Setting Function of English Newspapers during the 13th General Election

It is opined that the mass media forces attention on certain issues by constantly projecting them and suggesting its audiences to think about them. This article attempts to focus on the Agenda Setting function of English news media in Malaysia during the 13 th GE13 employing quantitative content analysis. Two English newspapers were analyzed, namely The Star and New Straits Times with 1362 news items identified. In order to gauge the public agenda, quantitative survey were done three times in the months of February, March and April 2013 respectively leading up to the election on 5th of May, 2013. The study found out that the agenda setting function of the English newspapers is important in transferring issue salience and issue attributes to their audiences. Individuals who highly rely on news from the media shall be likely influenced by the Agenda Setting effect of the media. There was no significant relationship between the English newspapers and the public agenda of the main ethnic groups in Malaysia. Hence, the public agenda of the Malays, Chinese and Indians have no significant relationship with the English Newspapers. Future studies could employ a qualitative approach in order to find answers to the reasons for lack of relationship between the English newspapers and ethnic public agenda.

Exploring the urban park use, preference and behaviours among the residents of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The understanding of cross-cultural upon park usage is vital to be enhanced among public since findings that been discovered in the Western context are not own any similarities with the Asian context. In fact, it has been in a long run for the Western nations to primarily contextualized and conceptualized much on the literature of park usage. This study aims to look at how the people use and perceive urban parks in their daily life in the Malaysian cultural context, and also highlights the constraints faced by Malaysians while using the urban parks in the city of Kuala Lumpur. A survey consisted of 669 urban park users as the sample of the study (365 men, 304 females) aged between 18 and 73 years (M=34.85, SD=11.46) were conducted in five urban parks in Kuala Lumpur. Respondents were recruited based on a random sampling method, which composed of three main ethnic groups in Malaysia. Malaysians wanted to use the urban parks for multiple purposes including active activities and others. Most of them would visit the parks and spend their time in a group consisting of family members or friends rather than alone. The percentage of respondent with 74.7% stated their reason of visiting the urban park in order “to get fresh air”, followed by the factor of reducing stress and relaxing with 69.7%; and the latter reason would be “to exercise, play games or keep in shape” with 61.4%. More than 80% of the respondents claimed the parks in Kuala Lumpur are safe to be visited. This is because, majority of the respondents tend to visit the parks in group of family or friends rather than alone. In addition, most of the respondents would run their activities in parks during the weekends, which simultaneously make them to enjoy their day in such comfortable and secure way. The findings of this survey would contribute to a better understanding of the present park usage of Kuala Lumpur residents. With a better understanding of current park-visiting habits, various constraints faced by the residents related to public security and safety, the Kuala Lumpur City Hall have been suggested to develop more comprehensive strategy in order to provide engagement and urban parks stimulation for its residents. In addition, this study is also fruitful for Kuala Lumpur future parks in terms of its development, design and management.

Differences in Body Build in Children of Different Ethnic Groups and their Impact on the Prevalence of Stunting, Thinness, Overweight, and Obesity.

The prevalence of stunting, thinness, overweight, and obesity among children differs by ethnicity. It is not known whether differences in body build across the ethnic groups influence the interpretation of nutritional parameters. To explore the differences in body build across the 5 main ethnic groups in Malaysia and to determine whether differences in body build have an impact on the interpretation of nutrition indicators. A total of 3227 children aged 2.0 to 12.9 years who participated in the South East Asian Nutrition Surveys (SEANUTS) in Malaysia were included in this analysis. Body weight, height, sitting height, wrist and knee breadths, and biceps and subscapular skinfolds were measured, and relative leg length, slenderness index, and sum of skinfolds were calculated. Z scores for height-for-age (HAZ) and body mass index-for-age (BAZ) were calculated using the World Health Organization (WHO) 2007 growth standards. Differences in relative leg length and slenderness across the ethnic groups were correlated with HAZ and BAZ. Correction for differences in body build did, in some ethnic groups, have significant impact on the prevalence of stunting, thinness, overweight, and obesity, and the pattern of prevalence across ethnic groups changed. At the population level, corrections for body build had only minor and mostly nonsignificant effects on prevalence, but at an individual level, corrections for body build placed a substantial number of children in different height or weight categories. Whether these misclassifications warrant additional assessment of body build in clinical practice will need further investigation.

Robust Accent Recognition in Malaysian English using PCA-Transformed Mel-Bands Spectral Energy Statistical Descriptors

The standard speech feature extractors such as Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) and Linear Prediction Coefficients (LPC) fail to perform well under noisy conditions. In this paper two noise less-susceptible features are proposed to mitigate the deficiency of MFCC and LPC. Statistical descriptors of Mel-Bands Spectral Energy (MBSE) is applied to the traditional filter-bank analysis, however, this technique increases the feature size. This issue is tackled by proposing a transformation using principle component analysis to generate a new PCA-MBSE feature set. Two types of utterances namely isolated words and continuous speech were elicited from 103 university volunteers in a controlled room to collect speech signals from three main ethnic groups in Malaysia. This study employed two classifiers namely K-nearest neighbors and artificial neural networks to recognize between the Malay, Chinese and Indian accents. Experimental results using independent test samples technique indicated promising accuracy rates of 92.7% and 93.0% using the proposed PCA-MBSE features to recognize between the Malay, Chinese and Indian accents on the male and female datasets respectively. It was found that under severe noisy conditions, the standard MFCC and LPC features started to deteriorate faster than the MBSE-based features. PCA-MBSE features showed the most robust quality where its performance was just slightly deteriorated by 17.1% and 13.6% as compared to MBSE features i.e. 33.1% and 31.3% on the male and female datasets respectively. Further poor results of LPC features were obtained indicating deterioration rates of 40.2% and 32.7%, while that of MFCC features of 35.7% and 36.8% for the male and female datasets respectively. As a conclusion, Malaysian English is a not a uniform English variety colored by its diverse ethnic nuances. Incorporating accent analyzers using the proposed techniques in automatic speech recognition can contribute a substantial improvement in noisy environment.

The Influence of Culture on Analgesic Consumption: A Retrospective Study among Malaysian Patients after Breast Cancer Surgery

This study was carried out to determine the relationship between ethnicity/culture and analgesic consumption among patients from three main ethnic groups in Malaysia after breast cancer surgery. A retrospective study design was adopted, using medical records of 80 patients. The findings showed that the analgesic most consumed by the patients during the 48 hour post-operative period was morphine equivalents (85%), followed by non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (60%) and paracetamol (38%). No relationship was found between ethnicity/culture and the type or amount of analgesic consumption.

DETERMINING DIGITAL MATURITY AMONG ICT USERS IN MALAYSIA

With the fast development in ICT, the need for digital maturity becomes increasingly important. Measuring ICT maturity has always been on the infrastructural, applications, and ICT Policy. Taking a different orientation, the present study views ICT maturity of the individual users vis a vis the ICT tools as a solid foundation for successful digital maturity in a digital economy. This paper aims at determining the level of digital maturity among ICT-Mobile Phone (smart phone and internet) users by looking at the intensity of usage of smart phone applications (apps) and functions and the level of indispensability of internet and its related characteristics and functions. A nationwide survey was conducted among 2124 respondents based on the population ratio of the main ethnic groups in Malaysia. Data were analysed using SPPS 20.0 and both descriptive and inferential analysis are applied to analyse the data. The results revealed that the smart phone functions, facilities, and apps which are mostly used include social media (Facebook/ Twitter), instant messaging (WhatsApp/Viber/Skype), Wi-Fi, downloading apps from ‘Play Store’ or ‘App Store’ and camera. The findings also indicated that a fast internet service, availability of internet at anytime and anywhere and the access to internet content without limit are the most indispensable characteristics and functions of internet for the users. The results implied that the respondents are above average in digital maturity in terms of intensity of usage of ICT-Mobile Phone functions, facilities, and apps. Meanwhile, their ICT-Mobile Phone engagement seemsto be high in digital maturity for the indispensable characteristics and functions of internet. The findings of this study have implications on ICT system and apps providers on the needs of the users. This is crucial in order to achieve digital maturity which will prepare the grounds for digital inclusion in a digital economy.

LOW ORGAN DONATION RATE IN MALAYSIA: A SURVEY

Organ shortage is a major concern in many countries. The objective of this paper was to investigate the factors that contribute to the low quantity of organ donation in Malaysia. The 1311 respondents in this survey came from the three main ethnic groups in Malaysia (Malay, Chinese and Indian). The survey was based on these components: The reason for not pledging to become a donor; the reason of refusing to become a donor; and whether non-fungible incentive would influence decision. The lack of information and trust were the factors that influenced the respondents to remain apathetic to organ donation. The results denote that people are unlikely to become a donor even if non-fungible incentive were provided to them. Thus, it is important for the government bodies to evaluate the programme and strategies of public education in relation to organ donation.

Perception of masculinity amongst young Malaysian men: a qualitative study of university students.

BackgroundPerception of Masculinity plays an important role in men’s lifestyles and health behaviors. Although, the importance of masculinity has been widely discussed in men’s health literature, very little is known about the meanings of masculinity in the Malaysian setting. This research aimed to explore the meanings of masculinity among Malaysian university men.MethodsThis qualitative study utilized in-depth interviews with 34 young Malaysian university men, aged 20–30 years from three main ethnic groups in Malaysia (Malay, Chinese and Indian). Thematic analysis approach was used to extract data. NVIVO v8 qualitative software was used for data management.ResultsFrom the data collected several concepts emerged that reflected the meanings of masculinity from the participants’ view points. These meanings were associated with a combination of traditional and non-traditional norms that generally benefit men who behave according to culturally dominant role expectations. These included: “Having a good body shape”, “being respected”, “having success with women”, “being a family man”, and “having financial independence”. Socio-cultural factors, such as family environment, religion, public media and popular life style patterns helped to shape and reinforce the meanings of masculinities among university men.ConclusionsThis study revealed that the university context provided a particular culture for construction and reinforcement of the meanings of masculinities, which should be considered by the educators to help in development of healthy masculinities.

Serotonin transporter gene polymorphism and its association with bipolar disorder across different ethnic groups in Malaysia

ObjectivesThe risk variants have been shown to vary substantially across populations and a genetic study in a heterogeneous population might shed a new light in the disease mechanism. This preliminary study aims to determine the frequency of the serotonin transporter gene polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) in the three main ethnic groups in Malaysia and its association with bipolar disorder. MethodsThis is a candidate gene association study of randomly selected forty five unrelated bipolar disorder probands and sixty six controls. Diagnosis was evaluated using the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (M.I.N.I). The control group consisted of healthy volunteers without personal psychiatric history and family history of mood disorder. Patients' whole blood was collected for genotyping. ResultsThis study revealed that the frequency of the short variant of 5-HTTLPR in healthy control group was highest in Indians (42.9%) followed by Malays (23.5%) and was absent in Chinese. The association between the homozygous ss genotype of the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism with bipolar disorder was not found in the pooled subjects (χ2=1.52, d.f.=1, p=0.218, OR=4.67, 95% C.I.=0.69–7.58) and after stratification into Malays (p=0.315, OR=2.03, 95% CI=0.50–8.17), Indians (p=0.310; OR=0.44, 95% CI=0.21–0.92) and Chinese. ConclusionThe differences in the frequency of the short allele of 5-HTTLPR across the three main ethnic groups in Malaysia were noteworthy. The present study showed no significant association between the homozygous short variant of the 5-HTTLPR and bipolar disorder in the pooled subject and after stratification into the three main ethnic groups in Malaysia.