1.6 Justification of the Study
The study on the relationship
between information accessibility, knowledge acquisition, and
management and transfer system among traditional herbal medical
practitioners in South West Nigeria justification in the following ways:
i.
This study would help to give an insight on the unique importance of
herbal medical practice with respect to their inevitable contributions
to the life of people in the community, thus, will make the traditional
herbal medical practitioners gain more recognition.
ii. Findings
from the study would assist the traditional herbal medical practitioners
in preventing and curing of some sicknesses, which demand indigenous
medical health care. There will be a sustainable emphasis by the
government to have local authority or even an organization in the state
to cater for the needs of traditional herbal medical practitioners in
South West Nigeria. This will be of great advantage to the people of the
States.
iii. Government would recognize the efforts of
traditional herbal medical practitioners and incorporate them into the
plan and implementation of the health programmes of the States.
iv. Furthermore, it would enable the people to be aware of the sicknesses which orthodox medical practitioners cannot handle.
v.
It would enable the librarians to store and make available to the
traditional herbal medical practitioners, information that they require
in the practice of their health care services.
vi. It would serve as a source of reference to future researchers.
1.7 Scope of the Study
This
study would examine the relationship between information accessibility,
knowledge acquisition and management and transfer system among
traditional herbal medical practitioners in South West Nigeria. The
study comprised of all six states in South West geo-political zone with
population of 4,409 traditional herbal medical practitioners in this
zone while target population would be restricted to all Gyneacologists
herbal medical practitioners (603) in the three randomly selected
states: Ekiti, Osun and Oyo States in South West geo political zone.
One
instrument would be used to elicit data from the respondents in this
study titled FAKAMTSHMP with 50 items. Frequency and percentage would be
used to analyse demographic background of the respondents while Pearson
product moment correlation coefficient would be used to analyse all
the research hypotheses.The field work will commence after the proposal
defence and hope to complete the work as soon as possible.
1.8 Operational Definition of Terms
The following terms are defined as used in the context of the study:
Traditional
Knowledge: This refers to the local knowledge that is unique to a given
culture or society. In this study, it would refer to local knowledge
that is unique to traditional herbal medical practitioners in South West
Nigeria.
Traditional Medical Practitioners: These are traditional
healers who provide health care services with local herbs according to
customs and beliefs of the community in which they reside.
Information
Accessibility: This refers to the way of getting available information
resources in both print and non print formats through personal
experience, teaching and learning; books; association meetings,
storytelling and others on various herbal medicine and the diseases it
can cure.
Knowledge Acquisition: Knowledge acquisition in this study
means knowledge that can be obtained by traditional herbal medical
practitioners from available information resources.
Knowledge
Management: Refers to the way in which knowledge is captured, preserved
and channelled properly by traditional herbal medical practitioners for
effective utilization in present and future.
Knowledge Transfer
System: Refers to all activities that generate utilisation, application
or exploitation of knowledge and its movement from one place to
another.
