A strategic approach to behavioral change communication streamlines communication processes of a health institution in a crisis setting like COVID-19 pandemic. In such a setting, it is important to focus communication efforts to reach the different audience groups and ensure common understanding and willingness to act by all the groups in order to achieve the institution’s mission of curbing the pandemic. This study contributes to these efforts by examining the mediating effect of interaction resonance in the relationship between information adequacy and strategic behavioral change communication. The study adopted a cross sectional survey design that involved collecting quantitative data from 223 health organizations of Uganda’s health sector in the different regions of the country. In order to test the study hypotheses, the study used Structural Equation Modeling of AMOS and the bootstrapping approach to test the mediating role of interaction resonance. The results revealed that interaction resonance fully mediates in the relationship between information adequacy and strategic behavioral change communication. This implied that having adequate information per say, does not cause behavioral change among the intended message recipients but requires a communication system that enables high quality interactions.

This research was carried out with an intention of establishing association between business networks and sustainability of SMEs in Uganda. A total of 384 SMEs were sampled for this purpose. From each SME, one respondent was considered. This respondent was either the owner or the manager. Survey method with specific focus on the use of closed ended questionnaire was employed in the study. Based on the factor analysis conducted on the data collected, three important components of business networks were established namely; quality of suppliers, operations of business associations and SACCOs as well as existence of loyal customers. To test the association, correlation and regression analyses were conducted. Results indicated that all components of business networks had significant association with SME sustainability in Uganda. Out of the three, quality of suppliers had the highest degree of association while operations of business associations and SACCOs had the lowest association. The same trend was reflected in the results from regression analysis with the exception of operations of business associations and SACCOs which did not have significant influence onto SME sustainability. Based on these results, it was concluded that quality of suppliers and existence of loyal customers had significant influence onto SME sustainability in Uganda. It was recommended that SMEs in Uganda need to focus on quality of suppliers as well as loyal customers in order to realize sustainability. These two types of business networks are therefore crucial to the sustainability of SMEs in Uganda. Though they did not have significant influence, business associations and SACCOs need not be ignored considering that they too had a significant association with SME sustainability.

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This study was carried out to establish whether structure of government support has any association or influence onto sustainability of SMEs in Uganda. The focus was to ascertain whether there is a link between how government provides support to SMEs and sustainability of these SMEs. A maximum sample size of 384 SMEs was selected. Questionnaire approach was used to collect data from the owners and or managers of SMEs. Based on factor analysis, two components of structure of government support were established namely; quality of structure of government support and extent of policy implementation. To test the association of the variables, correlation analysis was carried out. The results from this analysis indicated that both components of structure of government support had significant association with SME sustainability in Uganda. Quality of structure however, had higher degree of association as compared to extent of policy implementation. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis was carried out to check the degree of influence of structure of government support onto SME sustainability. The results indicated that both components of structure of government support have influence onto SME sustainability. Based on this, it was concluded that structure of government support has a significant association with and influence onto SME sustainability in Uganda. It was therefore recommended that there was need for government support towards SMEs to be properly structured in order to realize SME sustainability. The structuring needs to take into consideration the quality of the structure as well as extent to which SME policy is implemented.

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