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Cybersecurity Micro-credentials and Career Path Design: The Digital4Security Good Practices
No full textCybersecurity is critical to safeguarding digital economies, yet the sector faces a significant expert shortage. Addressing this gap requires scalable and flexible education to upskill both specialists and nonspecialists. This paper introduces a novel, good-practice methodology for the design of micro-credentials and an AI-driven career path planning solution, both aligned with the European Cybersecurity Skills Framework (ECSF). The primary objective is to support the scalable development of standardized, ECSF-aligned cybersecurity micro-credentials that address evolving labour market needs and facilitate personalized career progression. The proposed approach is validated through the Digital4Security case study, where 17 ECSF-aligned micro-credentials were developed and analyzed. Additionally, a dedicated open-source web application, the Cybersecurity Career Path Designer, supports personalized pathway planning for users by matching existing skills to ECSF profiles. This work demonstrates a practical and scalable framework for aligning education with cybersecurity market needs
Analyzing Class Stability Through C&K and Evolution Metrics: An Empirical Study
No full textThis study addresses the challenges introduced by the shift from procedural-oriented to object-oriented paradigms, focusing on the need to maintain consistent design while satisfying market demands, particularly in achieving software stability. While previous research has explored various factors affecting software stability, a gap remains in understanding the correlation between class stability and C&K and evolution-based metrics. To fill this gap, we conducted an empirical investigation using two open-source Java projects, Android and Eclipse, across three versions each. Our approach involved collecting C&K and evolution metrics using two different tools, calculating the stability metric for classes, and analyzing the data with SPSS to determine correlations. The results show a significant negative correlation between the class stability metric (CSM) and nine other metrics, confirming that C&K and evolution metrics are generally negatively correlated with CSM, although three C&K metrics exhibit weak correlations. These findings enhance our understanding of the relationship between various metrics and class stability, contributing to more stable and maintainable software systems
Exploring the Relationship Between Social Inhibition, Problematic Internet Usage, Loneliness and Well-Being of Femcels: A Comparative Study
No full textResearch on the involuntary celibate movement has grown exponentially, due to its male members committing violent attacks, resulting in over 70 deaths. Consequentially, females’ experiences of involuntary celibacy have remained largely unexplored, with existing research relying on thematic analysis, thus limiting their generalizability. The present study aims to address this gap, through its quantitative exploration of femcels experiences of social inhibition, problematic internet usage, loneliness and well-being. Participants (N=120) completed an online survey, which consisted of demographic information, the UCLA ThreeItem Loneliness Scale, Generalized Problematic Internet Use scale, Social Inhibition questionnaire and the Short Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale. Femcels reported significantly higher levels of loneliness, problematic internet usage, preference for online interactions, mood regulation via social media and social inhibition than non-femcel women.
There was a positive correlation between problematic social media usage and loneliness in both groups. Higher levels of social inhibition correlated with stronger preferences for online social interactions in femcels. Femcels reported significantly lower mental well-being, which was attributed to their higher levels of loneliness and social inhibition. Findings provide a more comprehensive understanding of femcels. The result of the study suggests that interventions which target social inhibition and loneliness may be more effective in improving femcels well-being. Lastly, as the first quantitative study on femcels, the findings provide a framework for future research
Knowledge and Stigma of Alzheimer’s Disease in the General Population of Zimbabwe
No full textBackground: Previous research has shown large gaps in knowledge surrounding Alzheimer’s disease on a global level. In addition to this, there has been strong indication that lower levels of knowledge are associated with elevated levels of stigma. Aims: In order to understand the effect of this on the Zimbabwean population, overall knowledge and stigma were assessed.
Methodology: A quantitative correlational mixed within and between participant's design was used to investigate the extent in which outcomes of Alzheimer’s disease knowledge, perceived stigma and attitudes towards dementia are influenced by age, gender and educational attainment. The sample used to investigate the variables was that of 88 participants recruited form the general population of Zimbabwe.
Results: Alzheimer’s disease knowledge scale reveled low levels of knowledge within the sample. Perceived stigma scores indicated high levels of stigma, however, contradictory to this, attitudes towards dementia within the sample were shown to be more positive. Statistical analysis revealed that only knowledge of Alzheimer’s disease was predicted by age (p < .001). All other statistical analysis were non-significant.
Conclusion: The lack of knowledge shown by the sample indicates that policy needs to be put in place. Furthermore, further research needs to be conducted in order to gain a more in depth understanding on the levels of stigma within the population
A comprehensive study, evaluation and comparison of factors which contribute to stress and resilience in junior and senior, male and female paramedics
No full textThis study investigated the relationship between stress and resilience amongst four groups, junior and senior paramedics and male and female paramedics. The aim was to investigate if one gender experienced higher stress and resilience levels than the other and whether experience level impacts resilience or stress. A questionnaire was distributed to participants through their respective organisations. Forty-nine males and eleven females participated, specifically forty-two senior paramedics and eighteen junior participants. Results from the study indicated discrete differences between variability of stress and resilience amongst the subgroups. However, there was no statistically significant result for stress [P=.367] or resilience [P=.723] in this study. Future research would benefit from partial or full funding and obtaining an equal number of participants for each one of the subgroups in the study as ensuring that the distribution of participants is normal will ultimately improve the likelihood of producing a statistically significant result
Investigating the Relationship between OCD Traits, Cognitive Rigidity and Working Memory Capacity in Students
No full textThe study of “Cognitive Rigidity and Working Memory Capacity in Students with OCD traits” aims to assess cognitive rigidity and working memory capacity in students with high levels of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) traits. The objectives of this study are: 1) to measure OCD traits in a general student population; 2) to measure cognitive rigidity (specifically attentional control) using a Standard Stroop Task; 3) to measure working memory capacity using the Digit Span Task; 4) to examine whether there is a relationship between OCD traits in students and working memory capacity. This study hypothesises that cognitive load in students with high OCD traits may impair attentional control (an aspect of cognitive rigidity) and working memory capacity (WMC), resulting in poorer performance in the Stroop Task and the Digit Span Task in comparison to students with lower OCD trait scores
Multilingual Toxicity Detection with Enhanced Balancing and Contextual Learning
No full textOnline toxicity detection systems struggle immensely in scaling across multiple, diverse linguistic and cultural environments, frequently privileging high-resource languages and offering poor protection to low-resource languages speakers. This work presents MultiToxiGuard, a multilingual toxicity detection system that solves these problems using three new components: a Smart Balancing Module using hierarchical sampling and dynamic weighting, a Contextual Enhancement Layer leveraging cultural embeddings for enhanced semantic awareness, and a Confidence Estimation System that includes robust uncertainty estimation. Utilizing a dataset of 15 languages from 9 language families, rigorous data augmentation processes are implemented that greatly enhanced representation of low-resource languages (Japanese +1518%, Vietnamese +1208%). Results of the validation indicate high overall performance (F1=0.7944, accuracy=0.8278) with impressive uniformity spanning linguistic boundaries, and having a cultural fairness score of 0.96. Specifically, a few low-resource languages (Estonian, Swahili) performed better than medium-resource languages, highlighting the efficacy of these balancing techniques. Whereas performance objectives of F1 (≥0.88) and the rate of false positives (≤0.03) are still daunting, MultiToxiGuard is a major step forward in fair content moderation that closes the high to low-resource languages' performance gap, a sore problem of past techniques. This system presents a single, integrated framework for detection of toxicity which performs at a consistent rate without the need for distinct models per language, markedly improving the best available multilingual content moderation technologies
Exploring Stress and Body Image Dissatisfaction as Predictors of Disordered Eating: The Mediating Impact of Emotion Regulation in a Non-Clinical Sample
No full textAims: The current study examined whether stress, emotion regulation and body image dissatisfaction predict scores on a subjective measure of disordered eating. The study also aimed to investigate whether stress and emotion regulation predict scores on a measure of body image dissatisfaction. Finally, the current study aimed to investigate if stress or body image dissatisfaction emerge as predictors of disordered eating; does emotion regulation mediate this relationship.
Methods: Quantitative methodology was used for the current study. Participants (n = 86) had to fill out an online questionnaire that included some demographic questions followed by the EAT-26 scale, PSS-10 scale, DERS- 16 scale, and the AAI-10 scale.
Results: Results indicated that body image dissatisfaction was the strongest predictor of disordered eating. Stress was also a significant predictor of disordered eating, but its effect size was smaller, and emotion regulation failed to reach significance. Emotion regulation significantly predicted body image dissatisfaction, interestingly stress was not a significant predictor of body image dissatisfaction. The mediation analysis revealed that emotion regulation did not mediate the relationship between body image dissatisfaction and disordered eating.
Conclusion: These findings have important implications. Future research should use longitudinal designs to better understand causality and examine more specific aspects of emotion regulation that may be more relevant to disordered eating
Impact of Parenting Styles on Emotional Intelligence, Social Skills, and Mental Health in Adulthood
No full textAims: This study aimed to explore the association between the three main parenting styles: Authoritative, authoritarian and permissive/negligent and their effects on emotional intelligence, social skills and mental health in adulthood. The study attempted to determine if there were any specific parenting strategies that predicted better or worse social and psychological outcomes.
Method: The study consisted of 64 participants that used a self-report questionnaire to assess their perceived parenting style using The Parenting Style Inventory II (PSI-II), their emotional intelligence (EI)/social skills using the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire- Short Form (TEIQue_SF) and mental health using the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12). Two multiple regression analyses were run to assess the relationship between the three parenting styles and the two dependent variables: EI and mental health.
Results: The findings showed that authoritative parenting was a significant predictor of higher emotional intelligence which supports the literature that autonomy and emotional support foster better emotional outcomes. There was a non-significant relationship between authoritarian or permissive parenting and emotional intelligence. In addition, none of the three parenting styles showed any significant relationship with mental health, this suggests that other external factors may contribute to mental health alongside parenting such as: culture, genetics, and socio-economic status.
Conclusion: The study promotes the importance of authoritative parenting for better emotional intelligence. However, small sample size and a need for longitudinal research may help to understand the lasting effects of parenting on psychological health