Education is a social service that academicians are struggling to improve its quality so as to transform global communities economically and socially. Quality Assurance (QA) Policy aims at establishing a culture of continuous quality improvement in Institutions of higher learning; colleges and Universities globally. The process may be hijacked or frustrated by institution’s internal management and national government policy implementation procedures. The existing literature shows that there is need to address access to policy knowledge, negotiation between policy makers and policy implementers, empowerment of policy implementers, influencing mindset of policy implementers.

The two objectives of this article are to establish how quality assurance policy implementation can be cognitively enhanced by universities and political leaders in Developing countries. A second objective is to establish relationship between pedagogy, research and implementation of quality assurance policy in universities. This article originates from partial data collected during PhD field research 2017 & 2018 where the following variables were observed significant for institutional policy implementation. The four major constructs ranked according to significance in policy implementation process were as Policy knowledge (cognitive value) 0.883, negotiation between policy makers and policy implementers or involved parties 0.947, empowerment of policy implementers in decision-making 0.873 and perceived service delivery or self-examination by service providers 0.835. Sub-test scores made these constructs to gain accumulative percentage after considering principal components analysis. Some few variables of low factor loading were retained on the scale due to their significance found in the literature review.

The current practice of policy implementation in universities and governments remains a challenge as cognitive value is not considered by policy makers and politicians in different global economies. There is a lot of resistance towards transformation and policy implementation due to failure of normal policy cycle. Little is being achieved and verbal practice is surpassing practice or reality of development and quality service. The few intellectuals remaining in developing countries where “masked-democracy” is significant, they are seeking VISA to enslave themselves in search for freedom of expression and possibility of practicing what they know through research. A lot of discrepancy exist between what they say, know and their practice. Pedagogy in such institutions and countries is practiced with reservation and little is achieved by the students due to system failures.

Keywords: quality assurance, pedagogy, research, policy cycle

Is a teacher a social worker? Is education a need for the community? Are education reform policies necessary to solve community problems? Does quality assurance as policy in institutions of higher learning meet its agenda? What are the factors hindering its effective implementation? Would pedagogy and research be of significant importance in quality assurance policy implementation in institutions of higher learning? These are rhetorical questions which this article will attempt to address. Just for the purpose of curiosity! Would you ask your neighbor the factors that enabled Europe to conquer almost the whole world? What makes the best university in the world be ranked in the position between number one and hundred? What makes a lecturer famous and prominent leading to promotions in ranks? What are the hindrances to the achievements? Quality assurance ought to cause a paradigm shift from a state of fear and enslavement within our nations least we get criminalized to be instigating trouble to leaders as we demand for equal rights and free participation in development.

A teacher is a mature person who accepts responsibility of facilitating learning. Learning is a process of acquiring worthwhile knowledge and skills to be applied in society to increase productivity and improve community livelihood. Social work is an accurate title for a profession that applies helping techniques in a disciplined manner to address social problems.¹ Social work has got traditional priorities of addressing issues like social injustices, discrimination and oppression within societies. In modern times social workers provides psychotherapies to families, individual and communities. Learners at different levels need psychosocial attention as well as adults. A teacher is charged with responsibility of creating an environment that will help learners to learn and equip them with knowledge and skills to heal the world. In Rwanda there is a school known as Agahozo shalom Youth Village (ASYV) which has a philosophy of “Heal the heart and Heal the world”. This philosophy is coined from Hebrew language “Tikkun ha’Lev; tikkun olam”.² This may literally mean “repair the heart; repair the world” this is the major role of both teachers and professional social workers. The healing of the heart begins with an individual and then this individual shares with the world to heal it.

Different authors and researchers have written about education in Africa to be lacking! Graduates are not meeting community expectation to improve livelihood and services. The reasons are both politically and socially motivated because of political disorientation and corruption within struggling communities stricken by poverty and poor leadership styles.^1,3 Engineers, medical doctors graduating from indigenous universities cannot win contracts to make roads or bridges in their own countries, doctors cannot treat top political leaders within hospitals of their countries hence developing countries depend on foreign companies and hospitals. The reasons may be both associated to capital investment in machinery and good will of politicians to local services. What about their children [politicians]? Do they study from indigenous universities? These are some of the questions that education system which is politically oriented has to answer. Questions of low motivated employees and leadership styles within universities and other public offices appear to be social workers responsibility to handle in this quality assurance era.^3–5

A reform is needed for university lecturers and leadership, students as well as public service and political leaders.⁶ A change of social transformation is inevitably desired and there is a call for social workers intervention in this process.¹ Time has come for our “misleaders” to stop throwing blames to the colonialists for the faults and mistakes committed fifty (50) years ago. As Smith and Naim argue that governments should allow transitions from military democracy to civilian democracy the same is to institutions of higher learning transitions should change from top-down leadership to bottom-up management systems which is more participatory.^7,8 Quality assurance systems should allow a culture of continuous quality improvement through participatory policy formulation cycle to be initiated in every university or college in which lecturers or employees will be empowered in decision-making with clear benefits to both parties.

Researchers and social analysts have written about some African countries to be having “masked-democracy” but in reality full of non-democratic leaders or misleaders to the African society. Hi? Would this be having a relationship with higher educational institutions? Quality assurance policy may not be fully established since lecturers are still not fully empowered to implement the policy as required due to the fact that level of sensitization as mentioned in recent study is low.^7,8 There is identified resistance towards QA policy implementation.⁹ As more writers argue that Education in Sub-Saharan Africa has not achieved what it would achieve, then a need for quality assurance policy to be implemented.¹⁰ Quality assurance policy aims at causing a paradigm shift in university leadership and management of activities done in universities.⁵ The core activities of every competing university are three; teaching/learning, research/publication and community outreach.¹¹ One of the six specific purposes of the higher education institutions is to have a common framework and understanding of quality assurance systems of teaching and learning among all stakeholders at continental, regional and national level.⁵ There is no quality assurance without quality teaching, research and community outreach. There is a need for staff participation in quality assurance policy implementation cycle that involves creation of quality assurance culture.^1,8 Quality teaching refers to the pedagogical practices that allow interaction between professional teachers and learners for the purpose of sharing knowledge and skills that are of meaning to enhance social and economic values hence leading to development.

Research for the purpose of academic award should be tailored towards solving problems in the community. Undergraduate and master’s researches in most universities have been taken with less seriousness and little do they impact the community as research and publication is lacking.^1,6,8 As mentioned by one research participant that, Quality assurance is to … “prepare, prepare, and prepare teaching university students… in university, students are “global” they read a head of lecturers hence for the purpose of quality teaching one must research, and prepare to teacher these dot.com students”.⁶ Teaching profession seems to be under threat. If any lecturer is not willing to research, write scholarly articles and publishes then he is bound to perish because in the world of academics, no one can accept such “unproductive” workers. Kampala International University current rewards and recognizes lecturers and researchers who are publishing annually as a way of motivation and promotion of research.

The authors have used text analysis basing ongoing PhD study of Kibalirwandi which has adopted both mixed research methods (QUAN+QUAL) as recommended by Morse.¹² Triangulation of data was seen appropriate for increasing credibility and trustworthiness of the findings. The researchers being quality assurance policy practitioner for more than eleven (11) years opted to use data triangulation from questionnaire (EPIC scale), observation basing on checklist, in-depth interviews as he interacted with managers at different administrative units within participating universities to get precise lived experience of participants in departments of different faculties.⁸

The study was both qualitative and quantitative since rigorous research methods were used from problem identification, literature reviewing, formulation of research questions and objectives. However, the major constructs were selected basing on factors with Eigen value 1.00 or more and their sub-constructs were selected basing on existing literature and significance in policy implementation cycle. The factor loading of sub-constructs supported the convergent validity. The qualitative section C, observation basing on checklist and in-depth interview made triangulation of data possible.

Pedagogy is a key word used in education meaning an art, practice or profession of teaching young people or youth and adults applying methods and principles of teaching.¹³ Teaching is dynamic it matches with society dynamics where curriculum keeps on being revised to meet the demand. Knowledge economies have invested in their academic institutions so as to increase competencies of adoptability, team work, communication skills and the motivation of continual learning.¹⁰ In universities where youth between 18-30 years mix freely with adults between 31-50 years pedagogy does not apply alone but also andragogy and heutagogy.^8,14 Andragogy is adult led learning while pedagogy is child learning.⁸ Heutagogy is self-determined learning like PhD and sometimes Masters of Arts by research.⁸ Child centered approach is being emphasized but in most institutions lecturers still use teacher centered approach with lecture methods dominating. MU-R04 arguably stated that students are given tasks to research on from Open education resources (OER) materials available on internet. The lecturer is also advised to search and compare notes otherwise “lazy students may cut and paste without discerning and providing the incorrect and inappropriate information. While lecturers can assign subtopics for presentations, he/she should move an extra mile in searching for quality information.⁸ Learners are supposed to be oriented into critical thinkers.² One needs to log in open educational resources and go to course units. This will be further understood as many world universities are now adopting use of moodle.net and mendeley desktop.

Service delivered is being hampered by poor employees’ recruitment policies where currently graduate students volunteers in teaching activities waiting to be employee. This may be due to tribalism, ethnicity, and nepotism where human resource procedures are never fully followed. Staff recruitment failures in universities and other government institutions turn into hindrances to knowledge development in institutions of higher learning as it is in government or public offices within developing countries. Recruitment of students and staff is still a challenge hence a need to cause and accept education reform.^5,11

Teachers and lecturers should prioritize research during lesson presentation and project research. Learners should be helped to be critic thinkers as they are assigned tasks to complete as a requirement for the partial fulfillment of a particular course unit. It was reported by research participants Kibalirwandi’s (2017) research that students who participate in formulating their personal notes and topic presentation perform better in final examinations.8

It is therefore recommended that lecturers and teachers should extensively prepare and encourage learners to make desk research on particular topics within the boundaries of those particular course units. Enablers like projectors, smart boards and any other relevant instructional materials can be used to enhance learning process. The percentage of participants who accepted that university administration embrace use of technology were 69% as 31% asserted that employers do not fund and support use of new technology.⁸ The qualitative data reveals that the participants from the six universities approached by Kibalirwandi in 2017 and 2018 indicated that little attention is given to research and publication by staff and students. In most private universities research and publications are very few on their universities websites. The few researches are abstracts without full articles yet they expect students and general public to acquire knowledge and improve their understanding.

While Fabrice Henard & Soleine argue that quality teaching lacks clear definitions, they still conclude that quality teaching cannot be grasped and appraised.¹² In this study quality teaching is a facilitation of learning process through which a learner is helped to discover new ideas and get grounded in immerse knowledge through research and innovation. Learners should attach value to teaching and teachers should get satisfied with the service offered.⁸ To measure quality teaching is related to criteria or indicators of good teaching such as, teachers’ satisfaction of service, retention rates among students, the value of graduates in community, excellence in service, fitness for purpose, education that provides accountability to community, respect for value of money .^12,15 Students should be able to position themselves after acquiring education from competitive universities that are ranked high as performing universities.15 Lecturers are ensuring this by improving daily attendance of both lecturers and students in all universities visited during field data collection.⁸ Value of money is being ensured by the quality assurance directorates ‘offices as they conduct employee self-evaluation and prepare for external quality assurance evaluation.

The participants in this study since they were teaching staff contributed to definitions of quality teaching through quality assurance systems put in place hence one cannot talk of quality assurance without quality teaching.⁸

Students’ researches have been supervised with little attention made to plagiarism, data falsification, manipulation of information and other research misconducts. The supervisors of students’ research claim of little pay, research being not important for future references. This was observed as most students from the same universities could not make references to the existing research documents within resource centers or libraries.⁸ Students would be encouraged to read previously presented research works of others though not yet published. It can be hosted on university website after checking plagiarism using turnitin software or plagiarismcheck.org which is provided by the Kibalirwandi as he sells profiles to research directors at the lowest cost ever! To improve research at both undergraduate and master’s level.

Quality assurance policy implementation is individually done by Institutions of higher learning and is evidence based witnessed through establishment of quality assurance system where teaching staff and students are at a forefront in participating in quality assurance policy implementation. Management in education institutions is charge with playing supervisory role. Supervisory role of management is sometimes referred to facilitative supervision where manager facilitates and aid the one being supervised to achieve organizational goal.¹⁶ The managers in education institutions will not command posts to give instruction but will facilitate staff to participate in management as empowered by appointments that grants 1st clients authority to act on behalf of the employer.¹⁶ The readers and practitioners may agree with HAQAA, 2017 that, “Developing economies require high level and skilled human capacity to identify and leverage opportunities flowing from increasing globalization. Equally to take advantage of the developments in the technology, sophisticated knowledge and insight are required which mostly flow from higher education. Most importantly from a developmental perspective, to promote and preserve democratic institutions, governance, and sustain cultures diverse and complex capacities are required-the source of which are again found in higher education sector.”⁵

Knowledge gaps that exist between policy makers and policy implementers have got advance problems on results and achievement of a target policy.¹⁷ Implementing team is equally important in policy cycle which has not been considered hence most government and institutional policies have achieved little due to knowledge gap between formulation and implementation.¹⁸ The policy cycle should be advocated for by academicians and politician hence value for money will be achieved in government and academic institutions.⁸

Resource allocation for policy implementation is sometimes not planned at policy formulation process.¹⁹ The resistance by administrators, lecturer and students as reported by Nkunyu in the 8th European Quality assurance forum might have due to knowledge gaps within formulation cycle since quality assurance is adopted policy as its history is traced from Bologna process accord.⁹ Broadbent arguably states that, “when a steering medium seek to impose values on an organizational system that do not cohere with the values therein, this can cause resistance. Alternatively the new values may colonize the existing ones leading to a change in the system.”¹⁹ The researcher established that one of the six universities visited during the study established its quality assurance directorate in 2017 yet most universities established QAD in 2009. The same institution does not have QA institutional policy handbook much as it has started on involving staff at different levels to understand quality assurance system by providing leaflets to create awareness and bridge knowledge gaps.⁸

Individual university human resource handbook policies have got subtopics like promotions and appointments of lecturers in higher ranks.⁸ These universities to promote a lecturer or staff, research and publication is one of the key prerequisite for qualifying for promotion in ranks as senior lecturer, associate professor, and professor. Therefore besides sharing knowledge research is for promotion in academic ranks. Who should neglect research and quality teaching in universities and accept missing the privilege of being promoted? However, some participants reported that government cautioned top university administrators not to promote lecturers in ranks for fear of high salary scale.⁸

Ownership of knowledge is yet another thing which is important. If one makes research and does not publish the findings will remain hidden from audience hence a need for the researcher to disseminate findings through publication. Publication in journal requires page cost which every university need to arrange for or open access journal could be the alternative. Publication requires manuscript to have real world situation, theory and contributions to knowledge. The study provides metaphysics, meta-cognitive, and epistemology position of the researcher.

Feedback to the research participants as they read findings they may appreciate if findings reflect their contribution or participation. For this matter therefore findings and conclusions should originate from participants contribution for credibility and trustworthiness of research results.

Research contributes to the existing knowledge as new findings are brought to surface then more knowledge is being shared on particular topic of concern. Students and policy makers may base their arguments on the scholarly article or research results. Research and publication increases the stock of knowledge. Research and publication exposes a researcher or lecturers to the public hence research can pull a researcher down or alleviate him/her above to surface for international recognition.

Research and publication helps in evaluating lecturers who have got expertise in supervising graduates, sharing knowledge and being among elite academicians. Supervisors and researchers are put to test during research process hence both are rewarded at a time of success. This can be observed from professors’ curriculum vitae (CVs) presented on the web sites.

Research and publication helps in managing university ranking at National, continental and global university ranking. Teaching takes 30%, research and publication 30%, citation (research impact and trustworthiness) takes 32.5%, international mix 5% and finally industry income 2.5%.20 Considering the African university ranking may take different criterion because research has not greatly been given attention. Most ranking organizations consider research and teaching very significant on ranking criteria. Let consider Global University Ranking a Russian organization which uses data from other ranking organizations. It takes the following criterions; academic performance, research performance, faculty expertise, resources availability, social significant activities of graduates, international activities and international opinion.

The study used EPIC scale which had seven (7) items in section A which was of background information, section B with 16 items that had tested variables, and section C had qualitative items numbered i-iv.⁶ The study titled “An Evaluation of Staff Participation in Quality Assurance implementation in Institutions of Higher Learning in Uganda” had four major constructs; knowledge, negotiation, empowerment and perceived service delivery.⁸ The first construct was testing both knowledge and awareness of the policy where by item 7 in section A was significant since many participants 66.7% that sensitization was between 50% to 100% while 11.9% were not aware of sensitization of the QA policy in universities. 88.1% of university lecturers are aware of the policy awareness hence they have participated in the policy implementation (Table 1).

Staff being aware of what it takes to have quality teaching and quality assurance they concluded by asserting that their service is not satisfactory because of reasons identified during in-depth interviews (Table 2).⁶

The reasons for not satisfying was identified as, knowledge gap about the policy implementation, low morale in executing duty, low access to new technology as expressed in Table 3 & Table 4 below.

The access to new technology had mean square between groups 1.304, within groups 1.517 and f test was 0.860 while significance was 0.497. Staff Morale had mean square between groups to be 1.061, within groups 1.064f test 0.997 and significance 0.422. The progress on my work not satisfying had mean square of between groups 1.185, within groups 1.430 f-test 0.829 and significance .515.⁶

The above results tend to propose that null hypothesis must be accepted because mean square between groups and within groups for these selected items were so closer to each other, f-tests were less than one (1), significance was less than 0.50 hence accepting null hypothesis.

These statistical data caused Punic and the researcher had to engage qualitative data to help in interpreting the results.¹² Qualitative research is descriptive and a researcher is fully immersed in the context where he establishes lived experience of the participants. It conventionally accepted in scale development that for the purpose of literature review and significance of the pool item a variable or item can be retained on the scale despite its low factor loading.⁶ These mentioned factors were retained much as their mean square, f-tests and significance would have contributed to drop out from the scale.^9,11,21,22 The university quality assurance is supposed to be tailored towards university mission, purpose and vision.²²

The participant MU-R3 argued that lecturers are involved in a number of policy formulation such as examination policy where, vetting examination by external evaluator, moderating examination, moderating grades, and entering grades after moderation are clearly spelt in the policy. KU-R01 also talked about blue prints which are marking guides for every examination that is presented to examination committee which is central for all faculties and schools of the university.⁶ The qualitative data got during the study proved how quality assurance policy is a codification of many policies enshrined in the quality assurance system of universities.⁸

The researcher being aware of transformative research design, he used mixed methods as recommended by researchers such as Morse, Tashakkori & Teddlie and others that mixed methods may allow triangulation.⁸ Transformative research design emanates from the use of:

1. Defining the research problem and searching the literature relevant to the topic
2. Identifying research design
3. Identifying the data sources and selecting participants
4. Identifying scale or constructing data collecting tools and methods
5. Analyzing, interpreting, reporting and using results.

The researchers above used this mixed methods concurrently as topic was thought of to be within policy cycle, specifically quality assurance policy in institutions of higher learning which aims at education reform to continuously improve quality of education.^8,12

The qualitative data and specific objectives of the major study made the researcher to retain these factors because it was meant for evaluation.⁸ Evaluation is to establish the worthiness of the programme or policy hence concluded that quality assurance policy was being implemented with some identified challenges in universities of Uganda.

Quality assurance policy being a codification of policies that are enshrined in quality assurance system, the university administration should increase sensitization level through publishing university policies into low volumes inform of leaflets or fliers to explain a specific policy. The voluminous policy handbooks don’t appear novelic in nature hence no motivation to be accessed by the lecturers or implementers.⁸

Policy formulation cycle should be followed from bottom to top leadership position. The four major cycle’s; policy formulation cycle, policy implementation cycle, monitoring &evaluation cycle, and termination cycle have to be applied by university managers.⁸ Some policies may need termination and formulation of new policies needed. Identification of the problem in the community, suggestion of the possible solutions to avert the problem, identify resources both human and material, identify indicators / success indicators, suggest methods of monitoring and reporting, identify personnel to evaluate and their expertise, finally a provision of reformulating or terminating a policy should be stated.

The question of, how can quality assurance policy be cognitively enhanced by university and political leaders in developing countries has been identified among mentioned hindrances by participants such as:

1. Knowledge gaps where implementers are not well informed of policy key information.
2. Negotiation between policy makers and policy implementers is not sufficient hence resources are not adequately allocated to help in implementation.
3.  The fact that implementers become delegated members of policy makers hence they need to be motivated and facilitated to enjoy participation.
4. Perceived Service delivery come as a satisfaction of the service provider(s) as he/she executes duty with all his/her efforts. The challenge that 23.8% in Table 1: above were not satisfied with the type of service being provided due to the expressed need to maximize profits or increased funds from large students enrollment that result into compromised teaching quality in private universities as some of the classes had more than 100 students.

The second objective for this article is; establishing the relationship between pedagogy; research and quality assurance policy was ideally found when a number of authors having identified quality assurance as being related to quality teaching hence teaching staff were enrolled for the study.²³ Research and pedagogy are two sides of quality assurance culture because university ranking takes 32.5% and 30% for research and teaching respectively.²⁰ Summary of world declaration on higher education mentions research in five of its summary points ^{2, 7, 8, 12& 15} with emphasis in points 8 & 12 as “Excellence in research…public support for higher education and research remains essential.”24 Students or graduate value in the community is one of the criteria for ranking hence it is important for quality teaching.^20,23 As it was mentioned that university students are “global” in searching information from internet, teachers cannot fail to research and search so as to avoid frustrating learners.

The question of staff motivation in policy implementation may not be neglected. Large labour turnover is recorded in private universities as one access students’ evaluation reports, payrolls and staff research & publications. Quality assurance agencies at national level can intervene so as to retain lecturers in universities and on the continent. While it is clear that elsewhere in the world, example of USA top 20% of the population own 81% of the financial wealth and 80% of the population to own 19% of the financial wealth, university lecturers are not listed among the top 20%.^8,25 What a struggle that teachers/lecturers have to make ends meet as they think of their families and students? Isn’t teaching an activity to earn one a financial wealth? Are institutional heads and politicians providing avenues for these teachers to achieve their wish? Are learners oriented to belong to the “owning social class”? The owning social classes are business people who own factories and those who sponsor or funders of politicians, corporate executives, policy makers, policy researchers, public media campaigners, and public policy debate crews.²⁵ Where are the teachers in this owning social class? This explains why lecturers are running out to get VISA to search for lucrative salaries. Higher education should contribute to peace and poverty reduction strategies among its communities through equipping learners with skills and knowledge.²⁴ Are lecturers not vanguards in this process? Do they sell what they do not have? Reduce poverty when they themselves can’t reduce poverty in their families and pockets! It is on record that politicians and some academicians still claim that low development of African countries is due to invasions of colonialists and forget to blame themselves for miss management of communities and public property.7

Educators; teachers and professional social workers can still construct this world as it was in 1944 when a small group in conservative suits gathered at New Hampshire resort to resolve the Global financial system.⁷ The two institutions came out of this conference World Bank and International monetary fund (IMF) were established. In fact some leaders still think that countries or institutions will be led according to their will in isolation.²⁶ This will end because globalization is taking precedence. Quality assurance policy is an international education policy that applies to all tertiary institutions with an aim to improve quality of education in higher institutions of learning. Compliance is an option with no alternative if institutions are to continue in existence for the next “thirty” years to come.²⁷

Finally, bridging pedagogy, research and quality assurance policy implementation is the concern of authors. The university top-administrators/managers as well as national leaderships are key authorities in determining the success of any policy in their places of jurisdiction. The quality teaching emanates from quality assurance culture of particular institution of higher learning. What is the relevance of this article to social scientists? Would it not be sufficient for a social worker to maximize client self-determination? Social worker should build on clients’ strength.^1,2 For social workers and educators, clients must be strengthened and getting oriented to succeed in life as it is taught to students of Agahozo Shalom youth village.² In the event of implementing quality assurance policy, social workers cannot be ex-concluded in implementation process since situational analysis is paramount as employees are not fully motivated, and resistance to democratic leadership still exist in some institutions. As that is not enough decentralization of financial autonomy at departmental level is still an issue. Quality assurance Policy implementation is suffocated by financial constraints at departmental level in most universities.⁸

Dr. Chaim Peri director of Yemin Orde Initiatives argues that “we mend the world by raising kids who believe they can change the world. We try to instill in their hearts that they are destined for leadership, for greatness. That what happened to me will not happen to you. That what happened to you will not happen to your kids”.² This is a responsibility of all educators to give hope to university graduates so that they can serve the world and change the world. If they are not sure of better life they cannot guide hopeless creature better life altogether. Assuming one would understand universities as quality assurance clients, and then data collection in this research would mean an activity of securing the information needed to understand the practice situation as a prerequisite to formulate a plan of action.¹ The plan of action is the “quality assurance policy implementation,” whose outcome will be continuous quality improvement of higher education. Assessment is the thinking process by which a worker reasons from information gathered to arrive at tentative conclusion.¹ This study was participatory where expert panel contributed to formulation of scale (research data collecting tool; EPIC Scale), in-depth interview process helped the researcher together rich information about policy implementation status / policy compliance.

The main study was approved by Mbarara University of Science and Technology-Research Ethics committee (MUST-REC) references MUREC 1/7 and Uganda National Council of Science (UNCST) reference SS-4248 as by August 2016 and March 2017 respectively.6,8 As a requirement for approval results should be disseminated through seminars, conference and university communities.

The authors would like to appreciate all research participants from the six universities in Uganda that participated in the study. The ethical approval committees mentioned above and those not mentioned like at departmental and faculty level authorities that led to ethical consideration approval must be appreciated without whom this study would not be completed. The authors of books, articles and research documents whose works have been consulted during this study are highly appreciated. We finally appreciate the leadership of The East African Centre for Research and Innovation in social work (CRISOWO) for allowing us come and celebrate and share research findings to this honorable conference, 2018 in Kigali- Rwanda.

None.