Search Results (223)

Background: The role of religion and faith-based organisations in public health is increasingly examined through the framework of religious health assets (RHAs), defined as resources located in or held by religious entities that may be mobilised for health and development. Within this framework, church health assets (CHAs) are conceptualised as congregationally specific expressions of RHAs, namely, the tangible and intangible resources recognised within local church settings and interpreted by church leaders as relevant to adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health (AYSRH). Despite growing interest, there remains limited empirical work examining how such assets are perceived in relation to young people’s sexual and reproductive health, particularly from an emic perspective in sub-Saharan Africa. Aim: This study explored how pastors in South Africa’s Vaal Triangle perceive church assets relevant to AYSRH. Methods: The article presents findings from a qualitative study based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with eleven purposively selected pastors from Vanderbijlpark, Vereeniging, and Sasolburg. Data were collected between August 2019 and February 2020, prior to the COVID-19 restrictions that later altered face-to-face engagement in South Africa. Data were analysed using thematic content analysis informed by interpretive description, employing iterative coding, constant comparison, memoing, and a clearly defined audit trail. Results: The findings identified ten perceived CHAs, comprising five tangible assets, interaction spaces, community resources, normative teaching materials, networks and partnerships, and financial resources—and five intangible assets—reputation, voice on sexuality, mission and vision, a ready audience, and embodied messages. Across these themes, pastors predominantly framed AYSRH in moral and pedagogical terms, emphasising abstinence, guidance, and restoration, rather than a broader continuum encompassing information, prevention, care, rights, and service access. Conclusions: The study concludes that pastors perceive churches to possess substantial AYSRH-related assets; however, the analysis reflects perceptions rather than demonstrated implementation or measurable impact. The findings highlight both potential and limitation, indicating that the same assets may function as facilitators or barriers depending on their interpretation and application. The study contributes a pastor-centred, emic account of CHAs within a South African context and underscores the need for future multi-stakeholder research to assess how faith-sensitive AYSRH interventions operate in practice. Full article

Persistent territorial disparities across regions suggest that economic and geographic explanations alone cannot account for uneven development outcomes. This paper advances a theoretical framework that conceptualises territorial inequality as a governance-produced outcome, shaped by institutional configurations that distribute power, voice, and decision-making authority across space. The study introduces bottom-up capacity as an analytical criterion to assess how territorial governance models enable or constrain citizen agency, grassroots initiatives, and territorially balanced development. Four ideal-typical governance models—centralised, decentralised, collaborative, and participatory—are comparatively evaluated in terms of their institutional openness, mechanisms of power devolution, and potential to redirect development toward marginalised territories. The paper argues that governance models function as structural filters shaping whose knowledge is recognised, where resources flow, and which territorial priorities are legitimised. By linking governance design to spatial justice and territorial cohesion, the framework provides a novel conceptual lens for understanding the governance roots of spatial inequality and establishes an agenda for future empirical research on bottom-up territorial development. Full article

A sociophonetic study of coda /t/ in Australian Englishes spoken in Warrnambool and Mildura, Victoria, Australia, is described. A total of 2112 coda /t/ tokens produced by 61 adult L1 speakers was analyzed using auditory and acoustic profiling, focusing on four social factors (location, dialect, age and gender). The corpus included 33 Aboriginal English and 28 Mainstream Australian English speakers (24 male, 37 female) who fell into roughly equal age groups of <40 and >40 years. Overall, the “canonical” (aspirated) variant [t^h] was most frequently observed, followed by affricate [ts] and pre-glottalized [ˀt]; these variants accounted for 79% of all tokens. As for sociophonetic patterning, the best-fitting model included all four predictors (location, dialect, age and gender), with random intercepts for speaker and word. Dialect (Aboriginal or Mainstream Australian English) and age showed the strongest sociophonetic patterning, followed by limited effects for location. Variants were subsequently grouped into three superordinate categories—“breathy”, “canonical” (aspirated) and “glottal”—and a model was created including all four predictors and all two-way interactions between them, with random intercepts for speaker and word. This model showed that linking variants with broad voice qualities highlights even stronger sociophonetic patterning in some cases and is a promising direction for future research. The study contributes findings to three under-explored areas: consonant variability in Australian Englishes, fine-grained phonetic variation in Australian Aboriginal English, and analysis of speech from non-urban locations. Full article

Cloud-based telephony platforms face growing fraud risks including voice phishing (vishing), subscription abuse, and organizational impersonation, with detection being especially challenging in low-resource languages such as Arabic. We present an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based security architecture for fraud detection in Arabic cloud call centers, combining onboarding verification, behavioral monitoring, domain-adapted Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), semantic transcript search, and Large Language Model (LLM)-based entity verification. The domain-adapted Langa ASR model achieves a Word Error Rate (WER) of 41.0% and Character Error Rate (CER) of 18.2%, outperforming all evaluated commercial baselines. LLM-based entity extraction with multi-call consensus achieves 97.3% company-name accuracy (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4, GPT-4) and 92.0% in the cost-effective deployed configuration (GPT-3.5 with log-probability filtering). Evaluated on production data from a Middle East and North Africa (MENA)-region provider spanning more than 1000 accounts, the pipeline flagged 47 accounts of which 41 were confirmed fraudulent (directly observed precision 87.2%, 95% confidence interval (CI): 74.3–95.2%; estimated recall 51–82% under conservative base-rate assumptions—not directly measured), providing evidence for the viability of a unified, threat-model-driven architecture for low-resource telephony fraud detection. Full article

A sense of school belonging predicts NEET outcomes for adolescents. However, young people from marginalized groups often have a lower sense of school belonging than their majority peers. Emerging understandings of belonging as a complex, agentic process shaped by multiple relational, contextual, cultural and structural factors have posed problems for real-world applications of belonging. NEET young people tend to be viewed through a lens of risk factors, with a lack of research accounting for their experiences and feelings. While recent research recognizes the intersectional effects of disadvantage, or ‘compound disadvantage’, on NEET outcomes for young people from certain social groups, there is a lack of viable alternatives for educators and policymakers to account for these differential experiences of belonging in order to be able to respond to them. Connected Belonging is a relational and identity-building approach to enhancing young people’s wellbeing through supporting their connectedness and sense of self across the eight social domains of their lives. This paper outlines the development and validation of a young people’s survey, which enables education professionals to attend to and respond to the differing belonging experiences of diverse groups, operationalizing an intersectional lens on school belonging. After introducing the views of young people about systemic priorities to better support their engagement in education, training or work (EET), gathered through a youth voice event as part of a parallel research project, the paper outlines the process of developing, piloting and validating the tool. We argue that this survey tool has the potential to support improved attention to the views and experiences of diverse young people in a systematic, regular fashion. Furthermore, it offers potential for the evaluation of supportive actions grounded in youth voice. Full article

Automated pig-welfare monitoring needs scalable, non-invasive signals that work across ages and individuals. A key methodological contribution of this study is the use of subject-wise validation, which ensures generalization to unseen animals and prevents inflated accuracy caused by growth-related and individual ‘voice’ differences. Vocalizations can help, but growth and individual “voice” differences can confound distress patterns and overstate accuracy without subject-wise validation. In our study, we explicitly accounted for individual variability by including animal identity as a random effect in mixed models and by using grouped cross-validation, where models were tested only on pigs not seen during training. This approach ensures that the reported accuracy reflects generalization across different individuals rather than memorization of specific vocal signatures. We analyzed 2221 vocal samples from 40 pigs (20 males, 20 females) recorded across four growth phases (farrowing, nursery, growing, finishing) under six conditions (pain, hunger, thirst, cold stress, heat stress, normal). Acoustic features extracted in Praat included energy, duration, intensity, pitch, and formants (F1–F4). Using blockwise variance decomposition, we quantified contributions of distress exposure, growth phase, and sex, and estimated the additional variance explained by animal identity. Distress exposure dominated intensity and spectral traits, particularly Formant 2, whereas the growth phase produced systematic shifts in duration and pitch. Animal identity added a modest but consistent increment in explained variance (~+0.02–0.03 R² beyond sex, phase, and distress). For prediction, we used 5-fold cross-validation grouped by animal. A Random Forest achieved a modest balanced accuracy of 0.609 and macro-F1 of 0.597; pain was most separable (recall 0.825), while other states showed moderate recall, indicating overlap. These results support hierarchical acoustic encoding of distress and establish a benchmark for precision welfare monitoring. Furthermore, they highlight that resolving complex physiological overlaps, such as heat stress and resource competition, requires a shift from unimodal acoustic models to multimodal Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) systems that integrate bioacoustics with continuous environmental and behavioral data streams. Full article

Youth-led STEM programming depends on skilled adult facilitators who can support authentic teen leadership, yet professional learning for developing these specialized skills remains understudied. Through three cycles of design-based research, we iteratively developed and studied a professional development model that trained informal educators from museums, libraries, afterschool programs, and schools to launch Teen Science Café programs—a youth-led model where teens organize STEM events. Analysis of data from trainer reflections, trainee interviews, trainee surveys, and implementation tracking across three iterative design cycles revealed six interconnected principles essential for effective professional development: focusing on a committed adult leader; personalized training characterized by mutual respect; learning by doing; establishing accountability that builds momentum; enabling learning from peers and near-peers; and recognizing success to nurture professional pride. Implementing these principles to prepare educators to center youth voice requires substantial, coordinated investment across stakeholders—commensurate with the complexity of developing youth agency and STEM identity in informal settings. From our findings, we contrast this approach with the “efficiency trap,” in which scaled training without sustained support wastes resources when many educators are trained but youth-centered programs fail to materialize. Full article

The practice of employing education students as unqualified teachers in schools has grown over the last three years as the teacher shortage across Australia and the world worsens. This study uses a Bacchian approach to critically analyse the “problem” of pre-service teachers (PST) undertaking teaching roles as unqualified personnel whilst concurrently completing their teaching degrees through the lens of university lecturers working within the Initial Teacher Education (ITE) space. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with eleven university lecturers. A Bacchian analysis of the discourse arising from these interviews was conducted and followed two distinct groupings, those being between the student and employer, and the student and the university. The silences within these discourses were found to be the voices of the university lecturers working within the ITE programmes since they were not given a seat at the negotiation table between schools and registering bodies, prior to the student undertaking a teaching contract. These findings demonstrate the need for strategies that engender greater awareness of and support for, PST working in the school system, where all stakeholders are actively involved in the implementation of a holistic, purposeful and accountable approach to addressing the teacher shortage in sustainable, future focused endeavours. Full article

Civic online participation platforms offer valuable opportunities to involve citizens in local governance and benefit from collective intelligence. Yet, vulnerable groups, such as older adults, people with disabilities, and the less educated, are often underrepresented in online political engagement. Aiming to empower these citizens to raise their voice online, we conducted two studies using an inclusive-by-design approach for developing an online civic engagement platform. In the first study, 39 individuals from two digitally low-performing European countries were surveyed about functions and features that would motivate and support their online participation. In the second study, focus groups with 13 digital and AI experts identified technical and informational requirements for effective use of the features desired by citizens. Our findings show the wishes for accessible, unbiased and secure AI-driven civic engagement platforms with transparency and user education about AI tools. In particular, chatbots require clear disclaimers and user guidance. Once citizens have been involved in the technical design process, both technical and informational feature preferences must be taken into account to avoid access and usability barriers or misunderstandings during the platform’s use. This is important to facilitate participation, especially for citizens from vulnerable groups. Full article

Generative AI is reshaping university teaching and creating tension around authority, evidence, and accountability when decisions are made using algorithms. From a student perspective, this study constructed a typology of distributed teacher–AI agency (TAI) and examined the discursive mechanisms that produce the illusion of teacher autonomy. A non-experimental, cross-sectional, explanatory study was conducted: a lexicometric analysis of the ALCESTE (IRAMUTEQ) questionnaire, using open-ended responses from 3120 students (Mexico, n = 2051; Ecuador, n = 1069), segmented into 1077 units, and analyzed using positioning theory. Co-agency was operationalized using Teacher Agency (A), Delegation to AI (D), Governance (G: disclosure, criteria, verification), and the Illusion Index (II = A/(D + G + 1)). Three configurations emerged: Immediate Customizer (28.8%) with very high A and minimal D/G (II = 25.4); Technological Literacy Facilitator (27.3%) with visible delegation and safeguards (II ≈ 2.0); and Operational Optimizer (43.9%) oriented toward accelerating tasks with moderate governance (II ≈ 2.7). The illusion was associated with the agentive erasure of AI and a rhetoric of immediacy/efficiency that replaced verifiable criteria. These findings transform the student voice into a criteria-based diagnostic tool for strengthening traceability, minimal verification, and responsible orchestration of AI in higher education. Full article

Intimate partner violence (IPV) remains understudied in China despite its public health significance. Previous research lacks comprehensive analysis of how Chinese media frames this issue, creating a gap in understanding the sociocultural factors shaping public discourse. This study employs corpus-based framing analysis of 603 news articles (435,581 words) from major Chinese newspapers spanning 2012–2022, a period encompassing significant legal developments including the 2016 Domestic Violence Law. We analyze how IPV is framed through examination of keyword frequencies, collocation patterns, and concordance analysis. Our findings reveal that IPV is predominantly framed as matrimonial conflict and family dispute rather than criminal violence requiring state intervention. We argue that framing IPV as a ‘family issue’ operates as a spatial containment strategy, relocating violence to the domestic sphere while rerouting intervention into administrative/civil channels rather than criminal accountability spaces. Our findings reveal significant imbalances in stakeholder representation, with government and legal voices dominating the public discourse domain while community support organizations are marginalized. Source attribution patterns produce uneven zones of legitimacy, where state actors occupy authorized public space while survivors’ experiences remain confined to private, silenced domains. This research enhances the understanding of IPV media coverage in China while highlighting the need for more inclusive public discourse. Full article

Objectives: To synthesize evidence on artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled medical history taking (anamnesis)—beyond large language models (LLMs) alone—and to translate findings into implications and research priorities for head and neck surgery. Methods: We performed a PRISMA-informed narrative review. Searches from database inception to 31 December 2025 (updated 3 January 2026) were conducted in MEDLINE (PubMed), Embase, Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, IEEE Xplore, and ACM Digital Library, supplemented by medRxiv/arXiv screening and citation chasing. We included studies evaluating or describing AI-supported history capture/summarization, conversational interviewing, symptom checker/digital triage, EHR-integrated intake-to-decision support pipelines, voice interviewing, education/training systems, and governance/ethical considerations related to digital anamnesis. Findings were synthesized by system category and by cross-cutting outcome domains, with a head and neck surgery interpretive lens. Results: Fifty studies (2014–2025) were included. Evidence most consistently suggested feasibility and acceptability of pre-consultation computer-assisted history taking and the potential to reduce documentation burden and improve structured capture. In contrast, symptom checkers and digital triage tools showed highly variable diagnostic/triage performance and prominent safety concerns, highlighting the importance of conservative red-flag escalation strategies, continuous monitoring, and clear accountability. LLM-based diagnostic dialogue demonstrated strong performance in controlled evaluations, but prospective real-world validation, governance, and workflow integration remain limited. Conclusions: AI-enabled anamnesis comprises heterogeneous tools with uneven evidence. For head and neck surgery, potential near-term applications may include structured pre-visit intake, clinician-facing summarization, and training applications, whereas autonomous triage warrants harm-oriented, specialty-calibrated validation and robust governance prior to broader clinical reliance. Full article

This study examines the impact of key governance dimensions on public budget rationalization in Palestine from 2002 to 2023. Utilizing Legitimacy Theory, the research assesses how institutional quality affects fiscal outcomes, including revenues, expenditures, net lending, and budget balance. Time-series data from the Palestinian Ministry of Finance and the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators were analyzed using multiple regression techniques. The results indicate that Rule of Law exhibits statistically significant effects across multiple fiscal dimensions, while Government Effectiveness shows a significant positive impact on public revenues and a marginal effect on budget balance. In contrast, Political Stability, Control of Corruption, Voice and Accountability, and Regulatory Quality do not demonstrate statistically significant effects within the multivariate framework. These findings underscore the importance of strengthening administrative capacity and legal enforcement mechanisms to improve fiscal discipline, particularly in politically fragile environments. Policy implications emphasize enhancing institutional effectiveness and reinforcing legal predictability while supporting broader structural reforms for sustainable public finance management in Palestine. Full article

Endemic racism, operationalized through exclusionary discipline practices contributes to the “spirit murdering” of youth of color in schools. While the school-to-prison pipeline frames the funneling of students into the (in)justice system, the school-to-prison nexus expands this understanding by interrogating the reality that schools are prison for many. Thus, education abolitionists call for a systemic account of “schooling” to embrace creative risk and radical possibility in the pursuit of liberation. However, existing literature has not substantively centered the voices of youth directly involved in these carceral systems, nor invited them to dream. This study asks: based on formerly incarcerated students’ experiences in school and prison, what must educational systems do to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline? Guided by qualitative methods, we conducted semi-structured interviews with formerly incarcerated college students (four women, two men; majority Latinx/Hispanic) and conducted member checking. Our reflexive thematic analysis uncovered a troubling truth: schools frequently ignored and misinterpreted trauma, grief, and internalized pain among high school students. Participants described internal battles (i.e., mental health challenges) that often showed up externally as “behaviors” (e.g., fighting, skipping school, substance use) that resulted in exclusionary discipline. Equally important, participants re-imagined schools as homeplaces—sites of care, belonging, and agency. These narratives illuminate the need to dismantle punitive systems, center insights from those at the center of the experiences, and build just, loving, and equitable schools. Full article

Conversational agents are transforming digital interactions across various domains, including healthcare, education, and customer service, thanks to advances in large language models (LLMs). As these systems become more autonomous and ubiquitous, understanding what constitutes high-quality interaction from a user perspective is increasingly critical. Despite growing empirical research, the field lacks a unified framework for defining, measuring, and designing user-perceived interaction quality in human–artificial intelligence (AI) dialogue. Here, we present an integrative review of 125 empirical studies published between 2017 and 2025, spanning text-, voice-, and LLM-powered systems. Our synthesis identifies three consistent layers of user judgment: a pragmatic core (usability, task effectiveness, and conversational competence), a social–affective layer (social presence, warmth, and synchronicity), and an accountability and inclusion layer (transparency, accessibility, and fairness). These insights are formalised into a four-layer interpretive framework—Capacity, Alignment, Levers, and Outcomes—operationalised via a Capacity × Alignment matrix that maps distinct success and failure regimes. It also identifies design levers such as anthropomorphism, role framing, and onboarding strategies. The framework consolidates constructs, positions inclusion and accountability as central to quality, and offers actionable guidance for evaluation and design. This research redefines interaction quality as a dialogic construct, shifting the focus from system performance to co-orchestrated, user-centred dialogue quality. Full article