Search Results (2,718)

Background/Objectives: Young people’s mental health is increasingly discussed using diagnostic terms. However, limited knowledge exists about how young people describe distress and support needs. This study explored how young people with self-reported functional difficulties described challenges affecting their mental health and everyday lives. Methods: A qualitative study was conducted using 137 anonymized chat and text message contacts from BRIS (Children’s Rights in Society), a Swedish youth helpline. Contacts registered within the category “Functional Impairments” were selected through predefined inclusion criteria. The material was analysed in Swedish using Framework Analysis. Results: One overarching theme, Trying to Survive in an Emotional Storm, was identified, comprising three subthemes: Social Environment—Between Norm Pressure and the Need for Support, A Constant Struggle in the Educational System and Insufficient Parental Support—Between Desire for Help and Barriers to Understanding. Young people described challenges related to social relationships, school demands, and limited support from adults. Self-reported diagnostic labels, particularly ADHD, were used to explain and communicate distress. Conclusions: The findings suggest that distress was closely linked to social and contextual circumstances. For nurses and other mental health professionals, the findings highlight the importance of listening to young people’s narratives and supporting participation, autonomy, and meaning-making. Full article

Entrepreneurial ecosystems are increasingly viewed as drivers of sustainable and inclusive development, yet their true capacity to translate entrepreneurship into inclusive outcomes remains insufficiently understood. This study addresses this gap by linking national-level entrepreneurship indicators to three dimensions of inclusive growth—decent work and economic growth (SDG 8), innovation and infrastructure (SDG 9), and inequality reduction (SDG 10)—using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s National Expert Survey (NES) for 37 countries over the period 2020 to 2024. By integrating multistage machine learning techniques with institutional and ecosystem theories, the study captures the nonlinear and interdependent dynamics among entrepreneurial framework conditions. The results reveal that development outcomes depend not on isolated factors but on complementarities among finance, infrastructure, and R&D transfer. Entrepreneurial ecosystems foster innovation and productive employment, yet their inclusiveness hinges on institutional efficiency, governance quality, and redistributive capacity. The findings show that policy intent diverges from policy impact, as governmental support and cultural norms exert adverse effects when institutional coherence and absorptive capacity are weak. The research advances entrepreneurship theory by moving beyond linear, additive models toward a systemic understanding of ecosystem complementarity, and offers policy insights, emphasizing that innovation-led growth must be embedded in institutional coherence and social inclusion to achieve sustainable and equitable development. Full article

This article analyzes the explicit and implicit presence of social justice in the graduation profiles of Social Work programs at Chilean state universities, as well as the way in which its distributive, recognition, and participatory dimensions are articulated within the declarative curriculum. An exploratory qualitative design was developed based on a comparative documentary analysis of twelve official graduation profiles, retrieved from institutional sources and analyzed through a matrix grounded in a plural conception of social justice. The results show that explicit references to social justice are exceptional and that, more frequently, it is expressed indirectly through references to human rights, public policies, diversity, human development, citizenship, or territory. The distributive dimension shows the greatest operational development, especially through public policies, program management, state action, social equality, and intervention in vulnerable contexts. The recognition dimension appears mainly at a declarative level, linked to diversity, pluralism, interculturality, and gender. The participatory dimension is the least operationalized, with limited references to deliberation, democratic governance, or shared decision-making. The study identifies three profile typologies: distributive-institutional; rights-, diversity-, and recognition-oriented; and relatively integrated profiles of plural social justice. The findings suggest that strengthening curricular coherence may require moving from general normative statements toward competencies, learning outcomes, and assessment criteria capable of integrating redistribution, recognition, and participation in professional education. Full article

In recent years, scholarship has increasingly explored the intersections of theology, liturgy, and transgender identities. At the same time, transgender individuals continue to encounter resistance, exclusion, and stigmatization within many religious settings, where gender diversity is frequently framed as incompatible with established theological norms. Against this backdrop, this study examines the emergence of contemporary non-Orthodox Jewish prayers written by and for transgender and non-binary individuals. Drawing on a corpus of trans-specific liturgical texts, I argue that these prayers function as sites of religious and social negotiation through which marginalized identities seek recognition within existing religious frameworks. Rather than merely expressing personal spirituality, they constitute collective cultural practices that redefine the boundaries of belonging, legitimacy, and sacred personhood. Through poetic, theological, and political language, these texts challenge dominant assumptions about gender, embodiment, and religious authority while remaining intelligible within the broader Jewish liturgical tradition. The analysis demonstrates how trans prayer constructs the body not as a problem to be corrected but as a legitimate locus of sacred experience and religious meaning. In doing so, these prayers reconfigure the relationship between embodiment and spirituality, framing gender transition as a process of revelation, authenticity, and renewal rather than rupture or deviation. More broadly, they serve as mechanisms through which transgender Jews symbolically negotiate access to religious institutions, communal recognition, and theological legitimacy. I conceptualize this process as transcendent lobbying: a form of spiritual activism through which liturgical actors seek to reshape religious discourse and expand the symbolic boundaries of the sacred. Viewed sociologically, these prayers are not only theological texts but also cultural interventions that contest established power relations and create new possibilities for religious inclusion, visibility, and collective belonging. Full article

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is reshaping fashion design by expanding creative possibilities and accelerating innovation. For independent designer brands, which rely on originality, distinctive aesthetics, and creative identity, GenAI offers opportunities to sustain innovation while raising concerns about authenticity and consumer trust. However, consumer responses toward AI-generated clothing (AGC) among AGC-interested young Chinese consumers remain underexplored. This study explores factors influencing their attitudes and purchase intention toward AGC. Drawing on a TPB–TCV-based integrated framework, this study develops an integrated model incorporating consumption value dimensions, perceived effort of the brand in design (PEBD), generative quality (GQ), and AI creativity (AIC). Based on 568 valid questionnaires, PLS-SEM was employed, with multi-group analysis as a supplementary analysis. The results show that attitude plays a key mediating role in explaining purchase intention. Specifically, PEBD and subjective norm significantly predict purchase intention, while PEBD also indirectly influences purchase intention through attitude. Emotional, epistemic, and social values, PEBD, GQ, and AIC significantly contribute to attitude formation, whereas only PEBD and subjective norm demonstrate significant direct effects on purchase intention. These findings provide managerial insights for independent designer brands seeking to apply GenAI while considering consumer perceptions of creativity, originality, and value in shaping AGC purchase intention. Full article

The interest of agricultural economists in questions of animal welfare has been steadily growing. This conceptual review examines whether the methodological approaches used in this literature are consistent with the normative frameworks established by animal ethicists. We find that descriptive work—including preference elicitation among consumers and farmers and institutional approaches to implementing better conditions for farmed animals—is broadly compatible with animal ethics. However, the literature that assigns monetary values to the lives of non-human animals is more difficult to align with animal ethics principles. Comparing the human life valuation literature with nascent approaches to animal life valuation, we show that methodological differences can be identified as speciesist, and that assigning monetary values to animal lives is likely to remain fundamentally anthropocentric, because money itself is an exclusively human social institution. Full article

Do people become more willing to accept violence simply because of where they live? Using survey data from over 5000 residents across nineteen cities in Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway, this study finds that the perceived social climate of a neighbourhood, that is how much tension people sense between ethnic and religious groups, and how widespread they believe local problems are, shapes willingness to endorse violence even after accounting for personal grievance, humiliation, anxiety, and general pessimism. The effect holds in all four countries, and while cities whose residents collectively perceive more tension also show somewhat higher support for violence, this pattern is promising but not yet statistically proven because only nineteen cities were studied. The research also reveals that feeling marginalised strongly predicts support for violence among younger and middle-aged adults but fades by roughly half after age forty eight, whereas the neighbourhood climate effect remains steady across the entire life course. Notably, the neighbourhood pathway is more than twice as strong among Muslim residents, even though Muslims are no more likely to endorse violence overall, suggesting that policies concentrating surveillance on Muslim communities while neglecting the urban conditions they experience are misaligned with the evidence. Tests of possible explanations, such as distrust of local institutions, weakened community bonds, or feeling threatened by other groups, explain only a small fraction of the link, leaving most of it unresolved and pointing to the need for better measures of how neighbourhoods shape social norms. The core message is that preventing the attitudinal roots of violence is not only a policing matter; it is also a question of urban investment, namely decent housing, public spaces, community institutions, and inclusive governance, because what our neighbourhoods tell us daily about trust, conflict, and belonging shapes whether we come to regard violence as acceptable. Full article

This research introduces a new spectral pruning approach using the Adjacency Edge Index (AEI), which is a centrality measure from the theory of spectral graphs and first-order matrix perturbation theory. The AEI score reflects the contribution of each neuron to the network’s dynamic synchronizability via the Fiedler vector. The AEI approach thus offers a mathematically motivated saliency score in the context of data-driven neuron co-activation graphs. The proposed approach has been tested on MNIST, Fashion MNIST, KMNIST, and a real-world social network dataset. The approach has been extended to convolutional filter pruning on the CIFAR-10 dataset using spatial global average pooling. The AEI approach has been compared to magnitude-based pruning methods like L1 and L2 norms and gradient-based pruning methods like SNIP and GraSP. The robustness of the proposed approach has been established by comparing the results over five random seeds. The AEI approach is proposed as a principled, interpretable, structure-aware pruning criterion rather than an accuracy-maximising method. Spectral analysis demonstrates that AEI is the only evaluated method that systematically targets structurally peripheral neurons, whereas magnitude-based methods prune broadly across the structural spectrum and GraSP actively removes structurally central neurons, an effect most pronounced on more complex datasets and deeper architectures (CIFAR-100, ResNet-20), where it causes substantial accuracy degradation at high sparsity. The AEI approach has been extended to the Hybrid approach by combining the AEI and L2 norms. The Hybrid approach has been seen to improve the accuracy gap at 40% sparsity from 5.46 to 2.26 percentage points over the state of the art. The robustness of the proposed approach has been established by conducting ablation studies on the robustness of the approach to the selection of the graph. The approach has been seen to be moderately robust to the selection of the graph with Spearman’s $\rho$ ≈ 0.70. The accuracy gap has been seen to be less than 0.2%. Full article

Early childhood dental caries (ECC) remains one of the most prevalent and preventable chronic diseases affecting young children globally, yet behavioral and contextual determinants of its onset during the first 1000 days of life remain poorly understood and infrequently modeled in Latin American populations. This study presents a novel application of the PRECEDE diagnostic framework to conceptualize Early Childhood Dental Caries during the first 1000 days (1000ECDC) as a behaviorally rooted, socio-ecologically conditioned health problem. Drawing on a formative longitudinal pilot study (n = 10 mother–infant dyads, Caracas, Venezuela) and a complementary narrative literature review, we develop the first PRECEDE-based conceptual model linking maternal prenatal and postnatal behaviors to dental caries risk in a Latin American context. The model identifies dietary and feeding behaviors, oral health care practices, and healthcare service utilization as primary behavioral risk factors, modulated by predisposing factors (low oral health knowledge, limited self-efficacy, cultural norms), enabling factors (socioeconomic constraints, fragmented health systems), and reinforcing factors (social norms, family influence). Exploratory pilot findings indicated that more than 60% of children had advanced dental caries lesions at 24-month follow-up, consistent with regional estimates and underscoring the urgency of early intervention. This model provides practitioners and policymakers with a structured, evidence-informed diagnostic tool to guide the design of early-life oral health promotion programs, with particular relevance for low-resource Latin American settings. Future validation through expert consensus and prospective studies is warranted. Full article

This study analyzes peer mentoring as an institutional mechanism that may support students’ transition to higher education, addressing a gap in the literature regarding how mentoring might influence academic affiliation, sense of belonging and social inclusion, simultaneously. Based on an integrated analytical framework that combines the concepts of the “student’s craft,” belonging and mentoring for social inclusion, the research adopts a mixed-methods approach grounded in methodological triangulation, including quantitative data from questionnaires applied to mentors and mentees, as well as qualitative evidence from sharing sessions and observation. In the context studied, results suggest that peer mentoring functions as a form of institutional mediation through which students access and interpret the norms and practices of university life, with relational support appearing central to translating that knowledge into meaningful engagement. Within the mentoring program in question, participation was also associated with students’ reported sense of belonging and academic affiliation, as interrelated processes whose perceived impact varied across students’ diverse trajectories, particularly among international students. Furthermore, the study highlights the reciprocal nature of mentoring, promoting development and participation among both mentees and mentors. Peer mentoring is not an isolated intervention, but rather part of a broader institutional ecosystem that can impact student inclusion, participation and success. Full article

Background: Tattooed teachers are increasingly visible in schools, yet the norms governing their professional acceptability remain poorly understood. This study tests whether pluralistic ignorance—private acceptance systematically exceeding the acceptance attributed to others—operates in attitudes toward tattooed teachers, and identifies individual-level predictors of this misperception. Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted with 1226 individuals in Hungary across four groups: physical education (PE) teacher trainees, university students from other disciplines, secondary school students, and in-service teachers. Participants rated their own acceptance of tattooed PE and academic-subject teachers and the acceptance they attributed to other teachers and to parents, and reported tattoo status, gender, and professional background. Results: Own acceptance exceeded attributed acceptance in all four groups and for both reference targets, consistent with pluralistic ignorance; gaps were largest among secondary school students and smallest—though still positive—among in-service teachers. Personal tattoo experience was the strongest individual predictor of acceptance after group membership, and among teachers both age and experience were negatively associated with acceptance. Acceptance was predominantly conditional, structured by a visibility hierarchy in which arm placements were most acceptable and facial or neck placements least so. Conclusions: The apparent disapproval of tattooed teachers reflects collective misperception more than genuine consensus, suggesting that making actual peer attitudes visible could reduce conformity pressure and support more authentic professional self-expression. Full article

The Black Sheep Effect (BSE) posits that deviant in-group members are judged more harshly than deviant out-group members. The present investigation sought to delineate the relative contribution of both group identity and norms to the expression of the BSE. Two studies were conducted in the context of threats (i.e., pathogen intensity and variations in group norms) induced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Each study tested three basic hypotheses. First, that norm violators (i.e., black sheep) would be more negatively evaluated than norm followers. Second, that both group identity and norms would be associated with the negative evaluations of norm violators. Third, that norm violators would be judged more harshly by those who experience the greatest threat (i.e., via pathogen intensity in Study 1 and norm strength in Study 2). Both studies revealed that in-group members who violated COVID-19 norms were judged more harshly than in-group members who adhered to these norms. No evidence was found to show that social identity or threat (as variously manipulated) impacted the BSE. Norms, however, did make a modest contribution to explaining the BSE in both studies. Study 2 revealed that only prescriptive norms were associated with the expression of the BSE. These findings were confirmed in re-analysis of the results found in Study 1. These findings support the idea that prescriptive rather descriptive norms drive the BSE. Full article

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) metrics are increasingly used to assess corporate sustainability performance, yet their reliance on public disclosure raises questions about whether they capture actual organizational implementation. This study examines the alignment between externally reported ESG–Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) performance and internal perceptions in Kazakhstan, an emerging market characterized by uneven disclosure norms, institutional enforcement, and sectoral exposure. The analysis combines disclosure-based ESGQ scores with original survey data; matched comparisons between the two resulted in 52 responses from 25 firms. Using linear mixed models and principal component analysis, the study identifies a systematic disclosure–perception gap, in which internal perceptions exceed external disclosure-based scores in the governance and SDG dimensions, where standards are least codified and hardest to verify. Additionally, industry membership is more consistently associated with this disclosure–perception gap than ownership structure or firm size. The findings suggest that ESG measurement gaps in emerging markets are not reducible to greenwashing; instead, disclosure-based evaluation systems may under-represent practices that organizational insiders perceive as embedded, although positive response bias among respondents cannot be ruled out. The results support the idea that future research should complement disclosure-based ESG assessment with internal organizational evidence. Full article

Global rural population mobility and structural transition are profoundly reshaping agricultural land use patterns. Amid large-scale rural population out-migration in China, the regulatory mechanisms of traditional acquaintance-based social capital on farmers’ cultivated land use behavior are being reconstituted. Using survey data from 1086 farmers in the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain, this study employs structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis to examine how social capital (social trust, social networks, and social norms) influences farmers’ green cultivated land use transition under population mobility. The results show that all three dimensions significantly promote green transition behavior, with social norms exhibiting the strongest direct effect (β = 0.267), followed by social networks (β = 0.182) and social trust (β = 0.154). Mediation analyses indicate that social networks operate primarily through information acquisition, whereas social trust and social norms function mainly through technology cognition. Multi-group analyses reveal that short-term out-migration significantly strengthens the information transmission function of social networks, while long-term out-migration weakens the binding force of social norms. These findings provide a theoretical basis for understanding the relationship between population mobility and rural land governance, and they offer empirical evidence for formulating differentiated agricultural environmental policies adapted to the characteristics of population mobility. Full article

Widely associated with third- and fourth-wave feminism, Ani DiFranco’s artistic practice creates and curates queer and feminist musical experiences through the tools of songwriting and spoken-word poetry. Since the release of her eponymous debut album in 1990, DiFranco has carved out a distinctive voice within American folk and popular music and has cultivated communities of affiliation across feminist and queer communities. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of performativity and David Halperin’s conception of queerness as a form of non-normative identity, this article offers close, textual readings of a selection of DiFranco’s earlier songs and spoken-word poems, including “The Whole Night”, “In or Out”, “Lost Woman Song”, and “Self Evident”. In doing so, the article demonstrates how DiFranco’s performances extend beyond musical expression to function as sites of queer and feminist cultural production, where audiences are invited to participate in broader conversations about identity, community, and social change. Full article