Search Results (301)

The rise in online communication platforms has significantly increased exposure to harmful discourse, presenting ongoing challenges for digital moderation and user well-being. This paper introduces the EsCorpiusBias corpus, designed to enhance the automated detection of sexism and racism within Spanish-language online dialogue, specifically sourced from the Mediavida forum. By means of a systematic, context-sensitive annotation protocol, approximately 1000 three-turn dialogue units per bias category are annotated, ensuring the nuanced recognition of pragmatic and conversational subtleties. Here, annotation guidelines are meticulously developed, covering explicit and implicit manifestations of sexism and racism. Annotations are performed using the Prodigy tool (v1. 16.0) resulting in moderate to substantial inter-annotator agreement (Cohen’s Kappa: 0.55 for sexism and 0.79 for racism). Models including logistic regression, SpaCy’s baseline n-gram bag-of-words model, and transformer-based BETO are trained and evaluated, demonstrating that contextualized transformer-based approaches significantly outperform baseline and general-purpose models. Notably, the single-turn BETO model achieves an ROC-AUC of 0.94 for racism detection, while the contextual BETO model reaches an ROC-AUC of 0.87 for sexism detection, highlighting BETO’s superior effectiveness in capturing nuanced bias in online dialogues. Additionally, lexical overlap analyses indicate a strong reliance on explicit lexical indicators, highlighting limitations in handling implicit biases. This research underscores the importance of contextually grounded, domain-specific fine-tuning for effective automated detection of toxicity, providing robust resources and methodologies to foster socially responsible NLP systems within Spanish-speaking online communities. Full article

Background and Objective: Obesity is currently one of the major challenges in medicine. Research indicates that assessing eating habits can contribute significantly to the development of more effective treatment. This study aims to validate the Eating Behaviors Assessment for Obesity (EBA-O) in a sample of Spanish adults with overweight or obesity. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 384 participants. To evaluate the structure, reliability, and measurement invariance of the Spanish EBA-O, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), calculated McDonald’s omega for reliability, and carried out a hierarchical sequence of multigroup CFAs. Two-way MANOVA was used to assess the effects of sex and body mass index (BMI) categories on EBA-O scores. Results: CFA supported a second-order five-factor structure for the EBA-O, demonstrating excellent fit indices. It respected the configural, metric, and scalar invariance. The Spanish version of the EBA-O exhibited significant correlations with measures of binge eating, food addiction, and eating disorder psychopathology. Internal consistency was high (ω = 0.80). Significant effects of sex and BMI were observed across EBA-O subscales. Conclusions: The EBA-O appears to be a valid, reliable, and easy-to-use instrument for assessing eating behaviors among Spanish-speaking individuals with overweight or obesity. Its strong psychometric properties support its use in both clinical settings and research, enhancing the development of tailored interventions for this population. Full article

All individuals hold beliefs about their ability to successfully perform specific tasks. These beliefs, known as self-efficacy, play a key role in guiding and motivating human behavior. In education, both teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs and the collective efficacy shared by teachers within a school have been linked to improved performance, well-being, and job satisfaction among students and educators. While these constructs have been widely studied in various countries and contexts, little is known about them in Mexico, the country with the largest Spanish-speaking population worldwide. This study is the first to examine the relationship between teacher self-efficacy (TSE), collective efficacy, and other teacher- and school-level variables in Mexico. Given the absence of psychometrically robust instruments to assess collective efficacy among Spanish-speaking teachers, the Collective Teacher Beliefs Scale (CTBS) was first adapted into Spanish, and its psychometric properties were evaluated. Subsequently, multilevel analyses incorporating teacher- and school-level factors revealed that professional development on multicultural communication, classroom autonomy, and collaboration, at the teacher level, and collective efficacy and stakeholder participation, at the school level, were significant predictors of TSE. Finally, implications for future practice and policy are discussed. Full article

The Values in Action Inventory (VIA) is one of the most widely used measures for assessing character strengths. While the original version includes 240 items, shorter versions such as the VIA-72 have been developed to enhance its applicability. Psychometric studies of the VIA-72 in Spanish are still limited. This study examined the factorial structure, reliability, and convergent validity of the Spanish VIA-72 in a sample of 470 adults. Three alternative models—comprising three, five, and six factors—were tested using confirmatory factor analysis. All models showed acceptable fit, but the three-factor solution—Caring, Self-Control, and Inquisitiveness—showed the best performance in terms of parsimony, fit indices, and conceptual clarity. Internal consistency for the three-factor model was high across dimensions and comparable to previous studies. Convergent validity was supported through meaningful correlations with personality traits, particularly with conscientiousness. The factorial structure largely replicated findings obtained with both VIA-72 and VIA-240. These results support the Spanish VIA-72 as a reliable and valid instrument for assessing character strengths, offering a concise, theory-based alternative for Spanish-speaking populations. Full article

Generative artificial intelligence is reshaping how people interact with digital technologies, emphasizing the need to develop effective skills for engaging with it. In this context, prompt engineering has emerged as a critical skill for optimizing AI-generated outputs. However, research on how higher education students interact with these technologies remains limited, particularly in non-English-speaking contexts. This exploratory study examines how 102 higher education students in Chile formulated prompts in Spanish and how their techniques influenced the responses generated by ChatGPT (free version 3.5). A quantitative analysis was conducted to assess the relationship between prompt techniques and response quality. Two emergent prompt engineering strategies were identified: the Guide Contextualization Strategy and the Specific Purpose Strategy. The Guide Contextualization Strategy focused on providing explicit contextual information to guide ChatGPT’s responses, aligning with few-shot prompting, while the Specific Purpose Strategy emphasized defining the request’s purpose, aligning with structured objective formulation strategies. The regression analysis indicated that the Guide Contextualization Strategy had a greater impact on response quality, reinforcing the importance of contextual information in effective interactions with large language models. As an exploratory study, these findings provide preliminary evidence on prompt engineering strategies in Spanish, a relatively unexplored area in artificial intelligence education research. Based on these results, a methodological framework is proposed, encompassing four key dimensions: grammatical skills; prompt strategies; response from the large language model; and evaluation of response quality. This framework lays the groundwork for future artificial intelligence digital literacy interventions, fostering critical and effective engagement with generative artificial intelligence while also highlighting the need for further research to validate and expand these initial insights. Full article

Background/Objectives: The objective of this study was to validate the Spanish version of the European Evaluation of Vertigo (EEV) and analyse its test–retest reliability, standard error of measurement (SEM), minimum detectable change (MDC), concurrent validity, and discriminant validity. Methods: A cross-sectional validation study was designed. Subjects were recruited from the Otolaryngology Service of the University Hospital of Jaen. Psychometric properties of the EEV were analysed, including the concurrent validity, the SEM, and the MDC. Discriminant validity was calculated using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Results: The EEV test–retest reliability was nearly perfect (Kappa index = 0.97). The SEM and the MDC were set at 0.56 and 1.10, respectively. Regarding the discriminant validity, the area under the curve (AUC) was 0.831 (95% CI; 0.743–0.899) for the BPPV prediction, the AUC = 0.731 (95% CI; 0.633–0.815) for the disability prediction from the ABC-16 score, and the AUC = 0.846 (95% CI; 0.760–0.911) for the disability prediction from the ABC-6 score. Furthermore, a cut-off point greater than 12 was a good predictor of disability and the fall risk measured with the ABC scale, whereas a value of 11 points was a good predictor for discriminating BPPV patients. Conclusions: The Spanish version of the EEV is a valid and reliable instrument for evaluating the clinical symptoms of vestibular syndrome. This instrument demonstrated a nearly perfect test-retest reliability, a low measurement error, and good accuracy in discriminating between patients with vestibular disorders and those with BPPV. Full article

This paper examines morphosyntactic agreement in gender and number within the spontaneous spoken discourse of Spanish-speaking adults with Williams syndrome (WS), compared to that of typically developing (TD) speakers. Data were collected through natural speech transcriptions from both WS and TD groups. The analysis was conducted using Netlang 1.0.0—a piece of corpus annotation software—based on Dependency Grammar, to capture agreement patterns among determiners, nouns, and adjectives. The findings reveal that WS speakers’ gender and number agreement patterns are closely aligned with those observed in TD speakers, with only minor variations, such as a slight tendency toward unmarked gender forms among TD participants. Additionally, error rates are low in both groups, suggesting that observed discrepancies might be due to individual variation rather than condition-specific deficits, even though the statistical power of the study is limited. These results contribute to the ongoing debate on language abilities in WS, indicating that individuals with WS produce morphosyntactic agreement similarly to individuals with TD. Further research with larger datasets is recommended to validate these results, as individual variability within the WS group underscores the need for a more nuanced approach to analysis. Full article

Orthographic knowledge is a critical component of skilled language use, yet its large-scale behavioral signatures remain understudied in Spanish. To address this gap, we developed OrthoKnow-SP, a megastudy that captures spelling decisions from 27,185 native Spanish-speaking adults who completed an 80-item forced-choice task. Each trial required selecting the correctly spelled word from a pair comprising a real word and a pseudohomophone foil that preserved pronunciation while violating the correct graphemic representation. The stimuli targeted six high-confusability contrasts in Spanish orthography. We recorded response accuracy and reaction times for over 2.17 million trials, alongside demographic and device metadata. Results show robust variability across items and individuals, with item-level metrics closely aligned with independent norms of word prevalence. A composite difficulty index integrating speed and accuracy further allowed fine-grained item ranking. The dataset provides the first population-scale norms of Spanish spelling difficulty, capturing regional and generational diversity absent from traditional lab-based studies. Public release of OrthoKnow-SP enables new research on the cognitive and demographic factors shaping orthographic decisions, and provides educators, clinicians, and developers with a valuable benchmark for assessing spelling competence and modeling written language processing. Full article

This study investigates Spanish-language public discourse on YouTube following the unprecedented Iberian Peninsula blackout of 28 April 2025. Leveraging comments extracted via the YouTube Data API and analyzed with the OpenAI GPT-4o-mini model, it systematically examined 76,398 comments from 360 of the most relevant videos posted on the day of the event. The analysis explored emotional responses, sentiment trends, misinformation prevalence, civic engagement, and attributions of blame within the immediate aftermath of the blackout. The results reveal a discourse dominated by negativity and anger, with 43% of comments classified as angry and an overall negative sentiment trend. Misinformation was pervasive, present in 46% of comments, with most falsehoods going unchallenged. The majority of users attributed the blackout to government or political failures rather than technical causes, reflecting a profound distrust in institutions. Notably, while one in five comments included a call to action, only a minority offered constructive solutions, focusing mainly on infrastructure and energy reform. These findings highlight the crucial role of multilingual, real-time crisis communication and the unique information needs of Spanish-speaking populations during emergencies. By illuminating how rumors, emotions, and calls for accountability manifest in digital spaces, this study contributes to the literature on crisis informatics, digital resilience, and inclusive sustainability policy. Full article

This study validates a Spanish-language instrument designed to assess self-efficacy, digital competence, and anxiety in data-driven decision-making (DDDM) among pre-service teachers. Based on the 3D-MEA and the Beliefs about Basic ICT Competencies scale, the instrument was culturally adapted for Chile and Spain. A sample of 512 participants underwent exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Given the ordinal nature of the data and the assumption of non-normality, appropriate estimation methods were utilized. Results supported a well-defined four-factor structure: Interpretation and Application, Technology, Identification, and Anxiety. Factor loadings ranged from 0.678 to 0.869, and internal consistency was strong (α = 0.802–0.888). The CFA confirmed good model fit (χ² (129) = 189.25, p < 0.001; CFI = 0.985; TLI = 0.981; RMSEA = 0.041; SRMR = 0.061). Measurement invariance was established across gender and nationality, reinforcing the validity of cross-group comparisons. The study is framed within an educational context aligned with socioformative principles and sustainable education goals, which support reflective and ethical data use. This validated tool addresses the lack of culturally adapted and psychometrically validated instruments for assessing DDDM competencies in Spanish-speaking contexts, offering a culturally and linguistically relevant instrument with strong internal consistency and a well-supported factor structure. It supports the design of formative strategies in teacher education, enabling the identification of training needs and promoting evidence-based pedagogical decision-making in diverse Hispanic contexts. Future studies should test factorial invariance across additional contexts and explore longitudinal applications. Full article

Background/Objectives: Preschool children from low-income, ethnically diverse communities face disproportionate rates of behavioral challenges and early expulsion from early care and education (ECE) programs. This study evaluated the efficacy, feasibility, and utility of Jump Start on the Go (JS Go), a bilingual, AI-enabled mobile application. JS Go is designed to deliver a 14-week early childhood mental health consultation model in under-resourced ECE settings. Methods: This mixed-methods study compared JS Go to the standard in-person Jump Start (JS) program. Participants included 28 teachers and 114 children from six centers (three JS Go, three JS). Quantitative measures assessed teacher classroom practices and child psychosocial outcomes at baseline and post-intervention. App usability and acceptability were only evaluated post-intervention. Seven semi-structured interviews were conducted post-intervention with JS Go directors/teachers to assess the app’s feasibility for implementing the four program pillars: safety, behavior support, self-care, and communication. Results: JS Go was more effective than JS in promoting teacher classroom practices related to behavior support and resiliency. Both programs were similar in improving children’s protective factors and reducing internalizing behaviors, with consistent effects across English and Spanish-speaking children. Teachers rated the JS Go app with high acceptability, though predicted future usage showed greater variability. Rapid qualitative analysis showed that participants found the app easy to use, frequently accessed its resources, and considered it helpful for reinforcing key strategies across the four program pillars. Conclusions: JS Go is a novel approach to providing mental health consultation. It represents a promising mobile adaptation of the established JS consultation model, with important implications for future practice and research. Full article

Background/Objectives: Oral anticoagulant therapy (OAT) has been prescribed for over seventy years to prevent thromboembolic complications associated with various conditions. The emergence of direct-acting oral anticoagulants (DOACs) has reduced the use of vitamin K antagonists (VKAs), but specific clinical scenarios still necessitate VKAs. Nurses play a crucial role in managing OAT, and their self-efficacy is essential for optimal patient outcomes. This study aims to validate and adapt the Nursing Self-Efficacy for Oral Anticoagulant Therapy Management (SE-OAM) questionnaire to Spanish (SE-OAM-SV) to assess nurses’ self-efficacy in managing OAT. Methods: A methodological design was employed to develop the validity and reliability of the SE-OAM-SV. The process included translation and back-translation, expert review, and a pilot study. Content validity was analyzed using the content validity index (CVI), modified kappa coefficient, and Aiken’s V. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted with 100 nurses across Spain to test the SE-OAM-SV and identify comprehension issues. Internal consistency was assessed via Cronbach’s alpha. Results: The translation process highlighted some items requiring clarification, which were resolved through expert consultation. The SE-OAM-SV demonstrated adequate content validity with a global CVI of 0.86. The pilot study revealed an average participant age of 41.3 years and 17.3 years of professional experience. The SE-OAM-SV showed high internal consistency with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.96. The average score of participants on the SE-OAM-SV was 56.8 points, indicating room for improvement in all aspects of the scale. Conclusion: The SE-OAM-SV is a reliable and valid tool for measuring nurses’ self-efficacy in managing OAT in Spanish-speaking communities. This tool can facilitate the development of educational programs and public policies to enhance nurses’ self-efficacy and improve patient outcomes. The availability of the SE-OAM-SV supports larger-scale studies and validation in other Spanish-speaking countries. Full article

Background/Objectives: Physical activity (PA) during pregnancy presents health benefits for mother and child. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends at least 150 min of moderate-intensity physical activity per week for a healthy pregnancy. The objectives of this study were to describe physical and sedentary activity patterns, estimate the proportion of women meeting PA recommendations, and identify associated sociodemographic and obstetric characteristics in a sample of pregnant women from southern Spain. Methods: For this cross-sectional study, a random sample of 385 pregnant women attending their 20th-week scheduled ultrasound at their referral hospital was selected. Inclusion criteria were being between 18 and 22 gestational weeks pregnant and communicating in Spanish. A face-to-face structured interview was used to collect demographic, obstetric, and PA data, as well as sedentary patterns. Indexes of weekly PA in various domains were computed. Bivariate analyses were conducted to assess the variability of physical and sedentary activities according to sociodemographic and obstetric variables. Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05. Results: A total of 84.4% of participants engaged in some type of PA and 73.7% met WHO PA requirements. Higher leisure PA was associated with higher education (p < 0.05) and first-time pregnancy (p < 0.01). Higher work PA was linked to lower education (p < 0.01), being born outside Spain (p < 0.05), and later pregnancy awareness (p < 0.01). Higher sedentary daily time was associated with higher education (p < 0.01), speaking Spanish as a child (p < 0.05), and first-time pregnancy (p < 0.05). Conclusions: Most pregnant women in this study met PA recommendations. Correlates of leisure PA differ from those regarding work PA. Full article

Background: MSLQ is a self-report instrument that measures motivational orientations and learning strategies of college students and is widely used to measure self-regulated learning. MSLQ has not been translated into Spanish and validated in the Spanish-speaking Latin American population. Objective: The objective of the study is to adapt, validate, and perform a factorial reduction of 9 out of 15 scales of the MSLQ instrument and correlate the scales with the grade point average (GPA) of a sample of health sciences university students. Methods: Nine scales (48 items) of the MSLQ were translated into Spanish and adapted to the Mexican population. Students were invited directly in their classrooms and filled out an electronic questionnaire with personal variables and these nine scales of the MSLQ instrument. We performed exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (EFA and CFA) and based on the EFA a reduced version of the instrument was proposed. Results: A total of 439 students were included. The CFA showed unacceptable fit parameters with the original scale, therefore an item reduction and rearrangement were performed according to the EFA, and this yielded a reduced version with six scales and 25 items which showed acceptable fit parameters. This new reduced version rearranged the items of the effort regulation scale (ERE) into two different scales newly created in this version: time regulation (TRE) and self-regulation (SRE). The scales that disappeared in the reduced version were: intrinsic goal orientation (IGO), meta-cognitive self-regulation (MSR), and elaboration (ELA). Conclusions: The reduced version showed acceptable fit parameters that included the creation of two new scales (TRE and SRE). In addition, two scales were reduced (TVA and CTH), three scales were modified (MSE, TSE and ERE), two were unmodified (RHE and ORG), and two scales were eliminated (IGO and ELA). Full article

(1) Background: Sexual harassment in the workplace is a problem that particularly affects women and is not an exception in the world of work. Factors such as power asymmetry, the predominantly masculinized culture in many organizations, and the potential impunity of perpetrators increase the associated risks. This study aims to analyze the psychometric properties of the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire-Workplace (SEQ-W) to measure sexual harassment at work and assess its validity in Spanish. (2) Methods: A total of 120 active female workers (67.5% European and 32.5% South American) participated, completing validated instruments to measure sexual harassment, workplace bullying, self-perceived health, and job satisfaction. The questionnaires were administered online, ensuring anonymity and explaining the study’s objectives. (3) Results: An exploratory factor analysis revealed a bifactorial structure with the dimensions “Sexual Harassment by Coercion” and “Harassment by Unwanted Sexual Attention.” Both dimensions demonstrated adequate internal consistency, concurrent validity with workplace bullying and well-being scales, and discriminant validity with job satisfaction. Additionally, a pronounced floor effect was observed, indicating a low prevalence of sexual harassment in the sample. (4) Conclusions: the SEQ-W scale is a useful tool for assessing sexual harassment among active Spanish-speaking female workers, considering its validated bidimensional structure in Spanish. Full article