• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.1837-1846
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• 2016

Background: Colon cancer screening (CRCS) uptake is markedly affected by public awareness of the disease. This study was conducted to assess levels of knowledge of CRC, to explore the pattern of CRCS uptake and identify possible barriers to screening among Saudis older than 50 years of age and primary care providers (PCPs) in Al Hassa region, Saudi Arabia. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in randomly selected primary health care (PHC) centers, 884 Saudis and 39 PCPs being enrolled for data collection. Structured interviews were conducted to obtain information regarding socio-demographic characteristics, personal information relevant to CRC, awareness about early signs/symptoms and risk factors, and barriers to CRCS. Also, a self- administered data collection form was used to assess barriers to CRCS from the physicians' perspectives. Results: More than 66% of participants were lacking knowledge about CRC. Participants with higher educational levels, having ever heard about CRC, and having relatives with CRC had a significantly higher awareness of the disease. The rate of reported CRCS was low (8.6%). After conducting a logistic regression analysis, it was observed that female gender (OR=0.28; 95% CI=0.14-0.57; P=0.001), being unmarried (OR=0.11; 95% CI=0.10-0.23; P=0.001), lower levels of education (OR=0.36; 95% CI=0.16-0.82; P=0.015), and having no relatives with CRC (OR=0.30; 95% CI=0.17-0.56; P=0.001) were significantly associated with a lower CRCS uptake. There was a significant difference between most of the perceived barriers to CRCS and gender. Exploratory factor analysis showed that personal fear (especially fear of the screening results and shyness) was the major factor that hindered CRCS with high loading Eigen value of 2.951, explaining 34.8% of the barriers of the included sample toward utilization of CRCS, followed by lack of awareness of both person and providers (high Eigen value of 2.132, and explaining 23.7% of the barriers). The most frequently cited barriers to CRCS from the physicians' perspectives were lack of public awareness, lack of symptoms and signs, and fear of painful procedures. Conclusions: Poor levels of knowledge about CRC were found among older Saudis attending PHC centers in Al Hassa, Saudi Arabia. It is crucial to implement an organized national screening program in Saudi Arabia to increase public awareness.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.7
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• pp.3483-3487
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• 2016

Background: Cigarette smoking is one of the leading causes of death in the world. Tobacco consumption has grave negative consequences for health so that it is important to understand the reasons and motivations towards cigarette smoking and barriers against quitting smoking among the young generation for developing effective policies to control this widespread problem. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional survey was carried out at the Faculty of Medicine, Rabigh, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. A total of 438 young smokers participated from the University and the general population. Data were collected through anonymous, self-administered questionnaires in the Arabic language that contained questions about the reasons and motivations towards cigarette smoking and barriers against quitting smoking. The questionnaire also contained several questions regarding knowledge and attitude of the participants towards cigarette smoking. The data was analyzed on SPSS-16. Results: The mean age of the respondents was $22.9{\pm}3.48$, out of 438 subjects 87 (19.9%) were married, and 351 (80.1%) were unmarried, and 331 (75.6%) belonged to urban areas while 107 (24.5%) were from the rural areas. Responding to a question about a number of cigarettes smoked per day, 31% answered 11-20, 29% answered 21-30, and 25% answered 1-10. Questioned about smokers in the family, 34.5% responded more than one, with 19% for brother and 13% for father. About the reasons for not quitting smoking, 26% described lack of willpower, 25% had no reason, 22% said that people around me smoke, and 15.3% responded stress at home/work. The major motivation for smokers was smoker friends (42%), for 33.8% others, for 12% father/brother and 7.8% media. Conclusions: There are several avoidable and preventable reasons and barriers against quitting smoking. However, knowledge and attitude about smoking were good, and the majority of the smokers were well aware of the associated hazards. Therefore, there is a need to search out ways and means to help them to quit this addiction.

• Journal of Construction Engineering and Project Management
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.35-40
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• 2013

Currently, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is the epicentre of building services engineering encapsulating the construction industry. On rise of technological advancements, engineers have the ease to thoroughly investigate engineering aspects. Not only engineers, but other stakeholders, tender related people, financial analysts work in parallel as well. However, there are some factors that are stumbling blocks in the way of progression including delaying factors in the construction industry. The paper provides deep insights of delaying factors regarding public building projects of the KSA. Collection of primary data was carried out by conducting a survey which comprised of 63 chief delay factors. Professionals related to construction industry were asked for ranking the factors in terms of their frequency of occurrence and degree of impact. Seven groups of risk factors are categorized and a correlation analysis is performed by identifying the correlation amongst the variables. Finally, 31 leading delay factors are extracted and reported.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.21 no.12
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• pp.219-222
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• 2021

The study shed the light on the information required by Governance Principles and Corporate Social Responsibilities of human resources department from the point deans' perspectives of BA colleges during the discussion the publication of studies that academic members earlier submitted in many journals as authors of similar studies talking about business schools and CSR in Saudi Arabia universities. The study sample was the deans of business schools in northern border university and interviews were used to collect data. Findings showed that CSR in business colleges within an integrated set of research products in the human resource that he owns, support the mechanisms of social services from a purposeful pioneering and creative perspective. In addition, the success of business administration colleges in preparing these cadres depends on the college's senior leadership represented by its dean and its administrative policy to motivate academic staff and students to develop the CSR and governance.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.145-166
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• 2021

M-learning is one of the most important modern learning environments in developed countries, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Ministry of Education policies in Saudi Arabia, gender segregation in education reflects the country's religious values, which are a part of the national policy. Thus, it will help many in the target audience to accept online learning more easily in Saudi society. The literature review indicates the importance to use the UTAUT conceptual framework to study the level of acceptance through adding a new construct to the model which is Mobile Application Quality. The study focuses on the end user's requirements to use M-learning applications. It is conducted with a qualitative method to find out the students' and companies' opinions who working in the M-learning field to determine the requirements for the development of M-learning applications that are compatible with the aspirations of conservative societies.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.8
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• pp.61-67
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• 2020

This paper examines whether the combination of risk management and audit committee functions are associated with audit report lag. Audit report lag is considered an important aspect of the financial reporting. The financial reports are the main source of information for shareholders through which they make their decisions and it assists in reducing the information asymmetry. As the internal control mechanisms substitute the external ones, the internal board committees formed by the board of directors can reduce the audit work and, consequently, reduces the audit report lag. A key committee is the risk management committee. This paper examines whether the combination of risk management and audit committee functions are associated with audit report lag. We posit that a combination of such functions in one committee refereed as audit committee affects the audit report delay. Data were obtained from 198 manufacturing companies listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) for the years 2016-2018. A pooled OLS regression analysis shows that a combination of risk management and audit committee functions in a stand-alone committee named "audit committee" is associated with longer audit report lag. The outcomes suggest companies should prioritize the establishment of standalone risk management committee with activities separated from those of audit committees.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.11
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• pp.83-93
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• 2020

This empirical research aims to modeling and improving the forecasting accuracy of the volatility pattern by employing the Saudi Arabia stock market (Tadawul)by studying daily closed price index data from October 2011 to December 2019 with a number of observations being 2048. In order to achieve significant results, this study employs many mathematical functions which are non-linear spectral model Maximum overlapping Discrete Wavelet Transform (MODWT) based on the best localized function (Bl14), autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model and generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) models. Therefore, the major findings of this study show that all the previous events during the mentioned period of time will be explained and a new forecasting model will be suggested by combining the best MODWT function (Bl14 function) and the fitted GARCH model. Therefore, the results show that the ability of MODWT in decomposition the stock market data, highlighting the significant events which have the most highly volatile data and improving the forecasting accuracy will be showed based on some mathematical criteria such as Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE), Mean Absolute Scaled Error (MASE), Root Means Squared Error (RMSE), Akaike information criterion. These results will be implemented using MATLAB software and R- software.

• Asia Pacific Journal of Business Review
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.35-44
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• 2019

Service quality is a competitive weapon in the banking industry. Better understanding of customer's perception of service quality in the banking industry and the drivers of such perceptions will be a sound basis for continuous improvement in the quality of service offered to customers, customer satisfaction and customer retention in the industry. An earlier study by the same authors (Ibrahim and Bokkasam, 2016) revealed that the six SERVQUAL determinants are significantly related to and explain about 84% of overall customer satisfaction. It was also observed that the female customers perceived higher level of positive perception towards SERVQUAL determinants. The present study carries out a micro-analysis of the influence of gender on the constituents of the service quality and customer satisfaction for all the six dimensions of the SERVQUAL: Access, Communication, Competence, Tangibility, Empathy and Reliability, in Saudi banking sector. The study also analyses gender-wise levels of satisfactions with regard to individual components constituting various factors of the constituents of SERVQUAL. It was observed that the male customers have significantly low levels of satisfactions with regard to promptness in solving conflicting issues and comfort during waiting time in the bank.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.363-368
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• 2021

This study attempts to examine whether ownership of government-controlled corporations and audit committee effectiveness are related. The population of this study is 431 listed manufactured firms in the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) for the period 2012-2019 that published their financial and annual reports for the period 2012-2019. This population criterion is based on considerations that manufacturing companies listed on Tadawul have publicly accessible data and they have greater obligations to implement corporate governance code. Using the complementary hypothesis, this study predicts that there is a positive relationship between the ownership of government-controlled companies and audit committee effectiveness. The Pooled OLS regression shows that government-controlled companies' ownership is positively associated with audit committee effectiveness. Our study also indicates that ownership of government-controlled companies as a governance monitoring mechanism becomes more effective as it is combined with audit committee effectiveness which is another governance monitoring mechanism. The results of this study provide insightful evidence to policymakers at the company and country levels on the relationship of government-corporate ownership and audit committee effectiveness.

• Journal of Genetic Medicine
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.121-126
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• 2021

Chronic progressive external ophthalmoplegia (CPEO) is a complex slowly progressive mitochondrial disorder characterized by extraocular muscle weakness with or without multisystem involvement. The mainstay of therapy in a patient with CPEO is supportive. However, in moderate cases, surgery might be indicated including surgeries for ptosis and strabismus. In this article, we report a Saudi patient with CPEO due to compound heterozygous variants in the DNA polymerase gamma (POLG) gene c.2246T>C p.(Phe749Ser) and c.1735C>T p.(Arg579Trp), which are classified as pathogenic. Proper diagnosis with genetic testing confirmation is important to guide the management and counsel the patient about the prognosis and the management options. The patient was successfully managed with bilateral frontalis sling and illustrates the importance of surgical intervention to improve vision and cosmetic appearance in patients with CPEO. We emphasize the importance of multidisciplinary care in the management of cases of mitochondriopathy, especially CPEO.