Search Results (761)

This study develops a theory of parental engagement by exploring the perspectives of both parents and practitioners within a socio-economically disadvantaged area in Dublin, Ireland. Using Constructivist Grounded Theory, data were generated through focus groups with participants involved in the family literacy programme Breakfast Buddies. Analysis resulted in the development of a substantive theory, The Dance of Engagement, which conceptualises parental engagement as a relational, non-linear, and co-constructed process. The findings identify three foundational tenets—safety, equality and trust—as essential conditions underpinning effective parental engagement. Four interconnected categories describe how engagement unfolds in practice: choosing to engage, co-creating engagement, connecting to engage and sharing. These categories illustrate how engagement is initiated, sustained and extended beyond programme settings into home and community contexts. The study demonstrates that personalised practitioner approaches, relational environments and shared ownership of engagement processes support greater parental confidence, sustained participation and reciprocal learning between parents and practitioners. The resulting theory challenges deficit-oriented and participation-based models of parental engagement by focusing on collaboration and contextual responsiveness. The Dance of Engagement offers a theoretically grounded framework with clear implications for policy and practice, particularly for designing inclusive family literacy practices to improve outcomes for children and families in disadvantaged communities. Full article

Educational resilience commonly refers to better-than-expected academic outcomes among socioeconomically disadvantaged students or schools. However, little is known about its temporal stability, particularly in highly stratified and selective education systems such as Hungary’s, especially following major disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic. This study investigates the prevalence and stability of resilient and vulnerable elementary school profiles in Hungary using data from the National Assessment of Basic Competencies (NABC). School-level pedagogical value-added (PVA) indicators were estimated separately for mathematics and reading comprehension and aggregated across two three-year periods: the pre-pandemic period (2017–2019) and the post-pandemic recovery period (2023–2025). Schools were categorized into resilient and vulnerable groups based on the intersection of social disadvantage and performance. The profile analyses included 2048 schools; regression models included 192–201 cases depending on data completeness. Results show that resilient schools are rare and only partially stable, with fewer than one-quarter maintaining this status after the pandemic. Logistic regression analyses show that prior resilience, lower levels of disciplinary problems, and maintainer type were associated with a higher likelihood of post-pandemic resilience, while school size, regional location, disadvantage level, and teacher shortages lost explanatory power. Overall, the findings support a dynamic, context-dependent interpretation of school resilience. Full article

South Africa has implemented an extensive social grant system to improve the wellbeing of vulnerable households. However, evidence remains limited regarding the pathways through which social grants are associated with household food insecurity and whether these relationships vary across geographical contexts of South Africa. Understanding these mechanisms is essential for designing more effective and spatially targeted social protection policies. This study examined the relationship between social grant receipt and household food insecurity, hypothesizing that household income serves as the principal pathway linking social grants to food insecurity. This study used nationally representative data from the 2024 General Household Survey. A latent food insecurity index was constructed using a two-parameter logistic Item Response Theory model, and a moderated-mediation structural equation model was employed to decompose the association between social grant receipt and food insecurity into direct and indirect components while accounting for geographic heterogeneity. The results indicate that social grants are strongly targeted toward households with higher levels of food insecurity and lower incomes, confirming that grant recipients are among the most vulnerable households in South Africa. Household income was negatively associated with food insecurity and mediated 55.4% of the total association between social grant receipt and household food insecurity. This underscores income as the main transmission pathway. High geographic heterogeneity was observed. The indirect income-mediated association was strongest in commercial farming areas, followed by urban and rural areas administered by local leaders. The direct association was significant in urban and rural areas administered by local leaders. These results show that the effectiveness of income transfers depends on the household’s demographic and socioeconomic conditions. The findings suggest that although social grants play an important role in reducing household vulnerability, cash support alone is insufficient to address household food insecurity among disadvantaged households in South Africa. Therefore, strengthening income support provided through social grants should be complemented by location-specific interventions that expand employment opportunities, improve market access, promote productive asset accumulation, and strengthen local food systems, particularly in rural areas where constraints continue to limit household food security. Full article

Background: Mental health services face significant challenges in providing equitable care to ethnic minority and migrant populations. Despite the right to healthcare, disparities in service use among minority communities reflect not only practical barriers but also deeper issues of cultural compatibility between patients and health systems. Aim: This study aimed to provide a systematic overview of the main difficulties encountered by ethnic minority and migrant people when seeking psychological support from mental health services, with a specific focus on linguistic and communicative barriers and organisational and economic barriers. Methods: A scoping review was conducted using the SCOPUS database, searching for peer-reviewed studies focused on the European context. Studies were included if they addressed ethnic minorities’ experiences with mental health services from a user perspective and included primary research of any design. Studies focused exclusively on staff perspectives or not specifically addressing ethnic minorities’ help-seeking were excluded. Twenty studies met the inclusion criteria. A qualitative narrative synthesis was adopted, following PRISMA-ScR guidelines. Results: People with an ethnic or migrant background face specific and compounded barriers when seeking mental health support. Two main categories were identified: linguistic and communicative difficulties, including language distance, limited interpreter availability, and the gap between Western biomedical models and cultural frameworks of distress; and organisational and economic obstacles, including poor knowledge of available services, socioeconomic disadvantage, stigma, and institutional distrust. Discussion: These barriers are deeply structural and cannot be addressed through awareness campaigns alone. Increased access to services is not inherently beneficial unless accompanied by a fundamental transformation ensuring that care is culturally appropriate, safe, and genuinely responsive to minority communities’ needs. Distrust of mental health services may in part reflect a historically grounded and legitimate response to institutions whose practices have not always served the interests of minority groups. Conclusions: Reducing disparities in mental health care requires multi-level intervention, including inclusive policies, training of culturally competent professionals, and a critical rethinking of the models underpinning mental healthcare care. Future research should attend not only to the quantity of service use among minority populations but to the quality, cultural legitimacy, and safety of the care provided. Full article

Background. Cardiometabolic diseases are strongly socially patterned, with individuals of lower socioeconomic position experiencing a disproportionate burden of metabolic disorders. Obesity has been proposed as a potential explanatory factor that may partly account for the association between social disadvantage and adverse cardiometabolic profiles. This study aimed to evaluate whether obesity may partly explain the observed associations between socioeconomic position and multiple cardiometabolic outcomes. Methods. A cross-sectional study was conducted in 3108 working-age adults undergoing occupational health examinations in the Balearic Islands, Spain. Socioeconomic position was assessed using educational attainment and occupational category. Cardiometabolic outcomes included obesity, FLI-defined probable steatotic liver disease (FLI ≥ 60), insulin resistance, atherogenic risk, and metabolic syndrome. Multivariable logistic regression models with sequential adjustment were performed. Additional models evaluated attenuation after inclusion of obesity. Mediation analyses were conducted using bootstrapping methods. Results. A clear socioeconomic gradient was observed across all cardiometabolic outcomes, with higher prevalence among individuals with lower educational attainment (p for trend < 0.001). In fully adjusted models, lower educational level remained significantly associated with obesity (OR 1.61; 95% CI 1.18–2.21), whereas associations with the remaining cardiometabolic outcomes were substantially attenuated after adjustment. Inclusion of obesity reduced effect estimates for FLI-defined probable steatotic liver disease (FLI ≥ 60), insulin resistance, atherogenic risk, and metabolic syndrome by approximately 53–72%. Exploratory mediation analyses suggested that obesity was associated with approximately 28% attenuation of the association with estimated steatotic liver disease risk and 8% attenuation of the association with insulin resistance. Conclusions. Socioeconomic inequalities in cardiometabolic risk were evident across multiple metabolic domains. Obesity was associated with substantial attenuation of several downstream cardiometabolic associations and may represent an important explanatory factor associated with the observed socioeconomic differences in metabolic health, particularly for estimated steatotic liver disease risk. However, the magnitude of these associations varied across outcomes, and the cross-sectional design precludes causal interpretation. These findings support the importance of addressing obesity within its broader social context as a potential strategy to reduce metabolic health inequalities among employed working-age adults. Full article

This comprehensive meta-analysis reviews 45 studies published from 2000 to 2024 that use quantitative methods to examine how educational poverty—limited resources, poor-quality teaching, and disadvantaged school settings—affects students’ academic outcomes. Following PRISMA guidelines, effect sizes were calculated using random-effects models to account for variability across studies. Educational poverty was associated with a moderate, significant negative impact on achievement (Hedges’ g = −0.45, 95% CI: −0.50 to −0.40); this likely reflects a performance gap of about 10–15% between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students. Variability across studies led to subgroup and meta-regression analyses. The negative effects were more pronounced for primary students (g = −0.50) than secondary students, especially in high-inequality regions like North America (g = −0.55), and were largest for cognitive outcomes such as standardized test scores (g = −0.50), compared to non-cognitive metrics like attendance and graduation. Meta-regression showed that location, age group, and outcome type significantly affected effect sizes. Sensitivity tests and bias assessments confirmed consistent results. Overall, the studies highlight that educational poverty remains a major barrier to academic success, with the strongest effects seen early in education. These findings underscore the importance of early, targeted, and context-specific policies to reduce inequalities and improve learning conditions for underprivileged students. Full article

Children of imprisoned parents, who are often described as ‘orphans of justice’, suffer a multitude of disadvantages when a parent is sent to prison. Whilst their experiences of loss, stigma, and social exclusion are well documented, one area that remains critically under-examined is how court reporting processes may further exacerbate these harms. This study explores the lived experience of children 11–17 years (n = 6) who had experienced parental imprisonment, and non-offending adults (parents, caregivers, and adult children of offenders/n = 6) in relation to their experiences of parental crime reported in the press. This study also integrates views from individual interviews conducted with journalists and press regulators (n = 5), as well as data from a content analysis of three regional and two national newspapers across a three-week period. Findings indicate that current court reporting practices can be, for some children and family members, a contributing factor to their difficulties. Participating children and family members assert that publishing partial home addresses and references to family relationships heightens their visibility in the community, which they say contributes to community backlash and negatively affects their physical and mental wellbeing. The content analysis (n = 186 custody related news reports) showed selective disclosure of offenders’ personal and family details. Interviewed journalists strongly defended the principle of open justice and felt legally unable to add the wider context families often wished to share. However, they expressed genuine sympathy for the children, and while resistant to new legal restrictions, were open to developing voluntary guidance to help reduce harm where possible. This study proposes an integrated framework to strengthen ethical journalism and better protect children impacted by parental imprisonment, calling for improved public information, trauma-informed education, participatory research and practitioner tools that centre children’s rights. It argues that open justice must be balanced with relational accountability, ensuring open justice does not come at the expense of children’s wellbeing. Full article

This study examines how mothers raising children with disabilities in American Samoa experience the processes of seeking diagnosis, navigating special education, and advocating for services within an insular rural context. American Samoa, an unincorporated U.S. territory located 2600 miles from Hawaiʻi with a population under 50,000, represents a case of what we term insular rurality—a condition in which the structural disadvantages of rurality are intensified by oceanic isolation, territorial governance, and colonial history. Data were collected through three focus groups with fifteen mothers whose children hold a range of disability diagnoses, with a card sort activity at the outset of each session serving as an idiographic anchor to protect individual voice within the group format. Analysis followed Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis adapted for focus groups (IPA-FG), proceeding from line-by-line exploratory noting through Personal Experiential Themes and Group Experiential Themes within each focus group case to cross-case convergence and divergence analysis, interpreted through the Fonofale model of Pacific wellness. Findings reveal two overarching themes: systemic invalidation, in which mothers encountered deficit-based assumptions, stagnant educational goals, and institutional disengagement; and parent peer support as the primary infrastructure, in which mothers became de facto experts, built community-driven solutions, and envisioned more inclusive futures. Technology emerged as a contradictory force—valuable for parent learning but largely ineffective for children’s remote therapy. These findings suggest how workforce shortages and geographic isolation create conditions in which maternal advocacy becomes a systems-level necessity rather than a personal choice. Implications for rural education policy, IDEA implementation in U.S. territories, and culturally grounded family support are discussed. Full article

Essential oils are extracted from various parts of plants and have many beneficial properties and applications. These include aromatherapy, healthcare, cosmetics, fragrances, agriculture, household cleaning products, and the food industry. Due to their antimicrobial and antioxidant properties, essential oils are suitable for use as natural flavorings and preservatives, ensuring food quality maintenance and facilitating clean-label product production. In this context, assessing the quality of essential oils is of paramount importance. Among the various analytical methods, electrochemical methods stand out for their simplicity, cost-effectiveness, and environmental friendliness. Consequently, this review examines the applications, advantages, disadvantages, and limitations of electroanalytical methods proposed to quantify major volatile, electroactive components and determine their antioxidant properties. The objective of this evaluation is to establish a framework for future research that will address existing gaps and shortcomings in electroanalytical methodologies. Full article

This study investigates place-based barriers to initial teacher training (ITT) recruitment in rural-coastal regions of England, focusing on Cornwall as a case study. Utilizing semi-structured interviews with nine ITT provider leaders and nine trainee teachers, the research applies the concept of educational isolation to ITT providers in areas that are geographically remote, socioeconomic disadvantaged, and culturally isolated. The analysis is framed by the critical pedagogy of place and social capital theory, moving beyond deficit-based interpretations of rurality to critically examine how place-based inequities are produced through urban-normative policy and resource allocation. Primary data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Four substantive themes emerged: transport dependency and accessibility constraints that structurally exclude lower-income and disabled trainees; housing displacement driven by the tourist economy, which compounds financial insecurity; an “employment precarity problem” where localized primary school oversaturation coexists with secondary teacher shortages; and cultural and professional isolation that disproportionately impacts ethnically diverse trainees in demographically homogeneous communities. The research further identifies that community resilience, while enabling individuals to navigate structural barriers, can obscure infrastructural inadequacy and diminish impetus for systemic policy reform. This paper contributes to international scholarship on spatial justice and rural teacher education by presenting an integrated conceptual framework with transferable relevance to similar rural-coastal and peripheral contexts globally and by offering policy recommendations for place-weighted ITT funding, infrastructure investment in educationally isolated areas, and the development of collaborative provider models. Full article

Background/Objectives: Tooth loss reflects cumulative biological and social processes across the life course. However, population-level causal evidence on the influence of structural social vulnerability and multimorbidity on tooth-loss severity remains limited in middle-income contexts. This study evaluated the causal impacts of social vulnerability and multimorbidity on tooth-loss severity in Chilean adults under explicit potential-outcomes assumptions. Methods: We analyzed nationally representative data from the Chilean National Health Survey 2016–2017 ($N=5165$ adults aged ≥20 years with oral examination; analytic sample $n=4521$). Outcomes comprised ordinal severity ($y_1$: functioning dentition, moderate loss, severe loss, edentulism) and continuous tooth count ($y_2$). Exposures included a Social Vulnerability Index (SVI, 0–1) and Multimorbidity Score (MS, 0–1). We estimated confounder-adjusted proportional-odds and survey-weighted linear regression models. Population-averaged causal contrasts were obtained via g-computation comparing 75th and 25th exposure percentiles, with 95% confidence intervals from probability-proportional-to-size bootstrap (1000 replications). Age-dependent edentulism trajectories were generated using discrete-time Markov projections. Results: In the weighted population, 72.6% retained functional dentition, whereas 5.5% were edentulous. Increasing SVI from 0.091 to 0.345 was associated with a 0.110-point severity increase and 1.95 fewer teeth. Increasing MS from 0.00 to 0.20 was associated with a 0.062-point severity increase and 1.20 fewer teeth. SVI showed larger population-averaged effects than multimorbidity. Conclusions: Within a potential-outcomes framework and under the stated identifying assumptions, structural social vulnerability and multimorbidity each exerted independent effects on tooth-loss severity, with socioeconomic disadvantage showing the stronger distributional gradient across the life course. Because the data are cross-sectional, this causal interpretation is conditional on those assumptions rather than established by the design. Full article

Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) is a key tool for quantifying biomolecular interactions, and its use in studying interacting components outside cellular systems is well-established. Over the past 20–25 years, cell-based SPR techniques have emerged, with the promise of precise detection of molecular interactions within their normal physiological environment. Research on a wide variety of biological samples, which requires the detection of numerous parameters, has led to the development of a broad range of SPR techniques. This review aims to trace the chronological development of these techniques and the factors that have driven them. In this context, particular focus is given to grating-coupled SPR applied to cell assays. Its specific capabilities are examined, and the respective advantages and disadvantages of other SPR techniques are discussed based on the results obtained from studying specific biological objects. Finally, we venture to predict the promising SPR techniques, as well as the areas of application in which significant results can be expected. Full article

Background and Objectives: Child dental neglect is a clinically significant form of maltreatment that frequently reflects broader challenges related to caregiving within the family environment. Although oral manifestations have been described in prior research, the socio-behavioral profile of responsible caregivers remains insufficiently characterized, particularly in Central and Eastern European contexts. This study aimed to identify caregiver-level socio-behavioral characteristics associated with child dental neglect and to examine their relationships with clinical outcomes. Materials and Methods: A retrospective cross-sectional analytical study was conducted on 333 children (aged 4–17 years) diagnosed with dental neglect, presenting at a municipal hospital and a private dental practice in Oradea, Romania (2020–2024). Caregiver-level variables included age, educational attainment, socioeconomic status, health condition, substance use, and family structure. Associations were analyzed using Fisher’s Exact Test, Pearson Chi-Square, and Mann–Whitney U test, with Bonferroni correction applied where appropriate. Results: Most caregivers were young adults (93.1%), with low educational attainment (40.2% had no formal schooling) and high rates of alcohol use (47.1%). Low family income was present in 89.2% of cases and was significantly associated with non-adherence to the dental treatment plan (p  =  0.039). Caregivers without formal education were associated with neglect in rural areas (43.4% vs. 26.2%; p  <  0.001). Children of drug-using caregivers were significantly older at presentation (median: 12 vs. 8 years; p  =  0.014), and caregiver drug use was more prevalent in urban settings (18.0% vs. 1.8%; p  <  0.001). Over half of the children (52.9%) came from disrupted family environments. Conclusions: Dental neglect was consistently associated with young, poorly educated, and financially disadvantaged caregivers exhibiting high rates of substance use and unstable family structures. These factors may interact in complex ways, highlighting the multifactorial nature of dental neglect. Dental professionals are well positioned for early identification and have a professional and ethical responsibility to integrate child safeguarding into routine clinical practice. Full article

Background/Objectives: Household poverty is a known risk factor for early childhood development. However, the extent to which caregiver education may moderate income-related developmental disadvantages remains underexplored in Southeast Asian contexts. This study investigated whether caregiver educational attainment buffers the association between household income, child-rearing environments, and early developmental outcomes in Indonesia. Methods: This study utilized cross-sectional data from Indonesian caregivers. To maximize statistical power, analyses of the home environment using the Index of Child Care Environment included the full sample (N = 933). Analyses of developmental outcomes using the Early Childhood Development Index were restricted to 3- and 4-year-old children (N = 355). General Linear Models (GLMs) were conducted, controlling for child age and sex. Results: For the home environment, both household income (p = 0.042) and caregiver education (p = 0.021) were independent, significant predictors, with no significant interaction. However, for developmental outcomes, the Income × Caregiver Education interaction was statistically significant (p < 0.001). Conclusions: Income and caregiver education were independently associated with the home environment, while their interaction was associated with developmental outcomes among children aged 3 to 4 years. These findings are consistent with an educational buffering hypothesis and warrant further longitudinal research. Full article

This study examines how socioeconomic conditions shape learning outcomes in rural schooling contexts through a narrative review of the recent empirical literature. Studies published between 2020 and 2026 were identified through thorough systematic searches of EBSCOhost, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. Following screening and eligibility assessment, 50 empirical studies were included in the final synthesis. The review explores how household economic resources, parental education and involvement, and community and institutional conditions interact to influence literacy, numeracy, attendance, grade progression, and educational persistence in rural schools. The findings reveal strong convergence across the literature that structural socioeconomic disadvantage contributes to unequal learning outcomes by limiting access to educational resources, constraining school and institutional capacity, and weakening formal and informal support systems. At the same time, the evidence points to substantial contextual variation and conditionality. The effects of household and parental characteristics are mediated by school quality, governance coherence, and community support structures, while institutional improvements generate uneven outcomes across different rural settings. Building on these patterns, the study develops a multi-level conceptual framework that illustrates how convergence, divergence, and conditionality interact within rural education systems. The review argues that rural educational inequality emerges from the dynamic interaction of socioeconomic and institutional mechanisms rather than from isolated determinants, underscoring the importance of integrated, context-sensitive policy interventions that advance social sustainability objectives. Full article