This paper is a first attempt to investigate the production of Relative Clauses (RCs) in Mandarin children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI)  and their typically developing (TD) peers. The data from a preference choice task suggested that (i) Children with SLI performed better on the subject-gapped than object-gapped RC; (ii) Children with SLI performed substantially worse than their TD peers on the RCs production; (iii) Children with SLI were more inclined to omitting the complementizer and using simple sentences and sentence fragments as avoidance strategies. The Edge Feature Underspecification Hypothesis may explain not only the asymmetry of production seen in children with SLI, but also the presence of errors and avoidance strategies used by this population in the task. Almost all studies on languages with head-initial RCs found a preference for subject RCs in production, whereas the results on the production of Mandarin RCs are inconsistent: a primacy for subject RCs, object RCs or no asymmetry in the production e.g., . AdditioIt is now well acknowledged from a variety of studies that children with SLI have problems with the production of RCs e.g., . HoweverThis paper has been organized in the following ways. The first section begins by briefly reviewing previous studies on the production of RCs in children with and without SLI, followed by laying out the theoretical issues of SLI. It then goes on to present the elicitation production experiment and the results. The last section deals with the discussion and concluding remarks.To have a better understanding of RC production in children with SLI, a brief review of the studies on the acquisition of RCs in TD children is warranted. Extensive research on RC acquisition in many languages indicates that children younger than 6 acquire subject RCs with greater easiness than object RCs, such as in English ; German Under the multifactorial usage-based account , childrethe mother and the verb kiss) intervening between the filler and the gap in the object RC (1b).The processing based account also correctly predicts the subject over object RC advantage in English. Nevertheless, the subject-object RC asymmetry can also be explained by theories capitalizing on structural distance between the filler and gap. The theories presented thus far all explain the subject RCs primacy in the acquisition of English, although the first two accounts capitalize on the surface word order, and the last one on the hierarchical structure. Because of this, the surface word order and structural factors can not be teased apart in head-initial RCs . Mandarin is a typologically rare language with the SVO main clause and the head-final RCs, as in (3). The surface word order and structural factors pull in opposing directions: the surface word order favors the object over subject RCs advantage, whereas the structural factor favors the opposite, so the investigation of the acquisition of Mandarin RCs is helpful to establish which factor counts more.However, previous production studies of Mandarin RCs in TD children yielded inconsistent results. In total, there are three views on the sequence of Mandarin RCs acquisition: subject RCs advantage, object RCs advantage and no asymmetry.Data from several studies suggests that there is a subject RC preference in the production by Mandarin-speaking children, which is consistent with the pattern found in languages with head-initial RCs. In an elicited production task modeled after nage nühai zai huahua/changge “That girl is drawing/singing”), whereas all verbs are transitive in object RCs. The verb choice in the subject RCs condition may inflate the subject RCs advantage. The materials used in he “drink,” chi “eat,” mai “buy”) are problematic in subject RCs condition, because only semantically irreversible RCs might be built on them. Such RCs are less demanding on children since they can be interpreted without requiring full syntactic processing  and drop the head, which accounts for the overwhelmingly large number of the headless object RCs found in the corpus.Although The third view regarding this issue is that there is no asymmetry in the production of subject and object RCs by Mandarin-speaking TD children. ne) can be used as a relative marker in Mandarin, as shown in (5).Furthermore, all of the studies reviewed thus far have one flaw in the coding system. According to The first reason for this assumption is that with the presence of the demonstrative pronoun, the normal relative marker DE, usually preceding the demonstrative pronoun, can be omitted, as shown in (5). The second is that when the demonstrative is deleted, the relative marker must be added; otherwise, the sentence is ungrammatical, as demonstrated in (6).If we accept this assumption, RCs with demonstrative as the relative marker should be categorized as the target responses in the coding system; otherwise we risk underestimating the RC production in Mandarin children.To summarize, it is difficult to interpret the results of the aforementioned studies because of the problematic design and coding system. Additionally, although extensive research has been carried out on the acquisition of RCs in Mandarin TD children, no single study exists which investigates the acquisition of RCs in Mandarin children with SLI. We can hardly evaluate which preference holds in Mandarin RCs acquisition in this population. In this paper, we will test the production of semantically reversible RCs and improve the coding system, which may provide a more comprehensive understanding of the production of RCs in Mandarin children with SLI.Being similar to the studies on the acquisition of RCs in TD children, studies on children with SLI also concentrate on the question of which RC is preferred in the production. Furthermore, the researchers showed even greater interest in the question of what factors contribute to the decayed ability to produce RCs in this group of children, namely, the relationship between syntactic impairment and the production of RCs.There is now a substantial amount of data amassed cross-linguistically on RCs production in children with SLI, revealing that they exhibit severe deficits in the production of RCs across typologically different languages, such as English , SwedishThe first account attributes the poor performance of producing RCs in children with SLI to the impaired knowledge concerning syntactic movement. Some researchers maintained that syntactic movement is inaccessible to children with SLI, whereas others argued that children with SLI do possess the knowledge of syntactic movement, albeit it is difficult for them to achieve.The difficulty of producing RCs in preschool children with SLI was attributed to their inability to project a fully fledged clause structure. It has been shown that children with SLI tend to omit the obligatory complementizer and there is a 2-year delay in the onset of RCs production in this population . Håkanss3. He further argued that decay in production of RCs suggests that the knowledge of relativization is absent in the grammar of children with SLI, notwithstanding the production of few target-like RCs.To sum up, all the studies listed above converge in terms of the source of difficulty shown in RCs production, all pointing to the absence of the relativization in the narrow syntax of children with SLI. However, one of the limitations of this explanation is that it does not explain why children with SLI can produce target-like RCs if the syntactic movement is inaccessible to them.Wh-movement is difficult for children with SLI, but not entirely absent or optional in this population , which is in contrast to the Representational Deficit for Dependent Relationship theory  whether or not Mandarin children with SLI differ in the production of subject and object RCs; (2) whether or not Mandarin children with SLI differ from their TD peers in the production of RCs; (3) what are avoidance strategies adopted by children with SLI when they failed to produce targeted RCs?To date, no other studies have investigated the production of RCs in Mandarin children with SLI, hence this study could allow us to ascertain the nature of the deficits seen in them. Furthermore, we employ similar methodologies to those used in previous studies , and thiN = 13) and TD children (N = 30) were recruited from normal kindergartens. We asked their parents for permission to participate on behalf of all of their children.The current research included forty-three monolingual Mandarin-speaking children aged from 3; 2 to 5; 11. Both children with SLI . To choose the suspected subjects during the screening process, parents, and kindergarten teachers were required to complete a questionnaire to identify potential subjects and exclude those children who did not meet the criteria for SLI as described in Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test– Revised Chinese Version 1990 (PPVT-R for short), which can be used to test Mandarin-speaking children’s receptive vocabulary with considerable validity and high reliability (Diagnostic Receptive and Expressive Assessment of Mandarin (DREAM for short)  , which ir short) .The children’s performance IQ was assessed with the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence– Fourth Edition [WPPSI-IV (CN) for short] developed by King-May Psychology Assessment, Ltd., with the license from NCS Pearson, Inc. All children had non-verbal IQ within the normal range and had at least two of the six language test scores a minimum of 1 SD below their mean for age (DREAM and PPVT-R), of which the scores on the syntax in DREAM are at least 1 SD below the mean for their age. In the current study, all the children with SLI exhibit syntactic impairment, and are therefore referred to as children with Syntactic-SLI (SLI for short subsequently). F = 55.4, p < 0.01] and the post hoc comparisons with Bonferroni correction revealed that the TDA and SLI group do not differ in age  and there is significant difference in age between the TDY and SLI group . The TDA and TDY groups also received a standardized language test (DREAM) and their scores are within the normal range. All the TDA and TDY children are mentally and physically healthy and with normal language proficiency. We have recruited two groups of TD children to participate in the experiment, allowing us to specify the possible discrepancy between children with and without SLI. One control group of fifteen children  was chosen to serve as TD children with Age Matched (TDA) and the rest were 15 younger TD children (TDY) . A one-way ANOVA test showed a significant difference among the three groups in terms of age  feature, which makes the attractor more richly specified. Thus, in adult system, (26) is ruled in.However, as proposed by At this juncture, we propose that the Edge Feature Underspecification Hypothesis  refer to features at the edge of the clausal domain. The central idea of this hypothesis is that the deficit in children with SLI is caused by underspecification of EFs, and that there is significant variation in the underspecification. In line with wh-movement is not absent in these children. They concluded that although Wh-movement is hard for this population, they did show some ability to produce adult-like sentences derived by Wh-movement.We propose that there is significant variation in underspecification and that different degrees of underspecification may result in diverse patterns of disruption and impairment on the basis of both empirical and theoretical evidence. First, this assumption is well-grounded in empirical studies. For example, Theoretically, as we will discuss shortly, we maintain that the underspecification of EFs is caused by limitations in internal syntactic processing capacities in children with SLI. More specifically, the underspecification of EFs occurs when the cost of activating them exceeds children’s processing capabilities, resulting in the features not being activated in time for successful integration into the syntactic structure. There are two reasons to propose that grammars of children with SLI operate on the basis of defective EFs. First, the EFs are encoded at the highest level of the clause see . Kail 1, p. 53. According to EFUH, since the [Rel] feature of the moved element is underspecified in the grammar of children with SLI, the blocking effect arises in object RCs, resulting in the subject over object RCs advantage in production. Both EFUH and standard RM account predict a subject RCs preference in children with SLI. However, the key distinction between them is that EFUH stated unequivocally that the RM effect in object RCs is caused by the underspecification of EFs in children with SLI. The normal RM account attributes the RM effect to limited computational resources for computing a subset-superset relation in young children and children with SLI .The avoidance strategy adopted by our participants may lend credence to the existence of the intervention effect. First, as reported previously, headless RCs, also referred to as free RCs, account for a large proportion of RC production in all three groups. We assume, based on The intervention effect is complex because Mandarin is an SVO language with head-final RCs. The structural intervention occurs in object RCs while there is a linear blocking effect in subject RCs. A large proportion of free RCs were obtained in the subject RC condition, indicating that the linear intervention may also affect the production of RCs. The findings are in line with the proposal from Second, this study also discovered that our participants preferred subject RCs with reversed thematic roles over targeted object RCs. This avoidance strategy has also been attributed to the RM effect . SubjectAnother point to note is that TDA children opted for passive object RCs instead of targeted object RCs, whereas children with SLI and TDY children almost never produced such RCs. The possible reason is that the acquisition of passives was beyond the reach of TDY children  and chilAccording to this approach, the verb and direct object in the passive construction move together first beyond the position of the subject and then the direct object to become the head of the RC, thus avoiding the RM violation, as shown in (29).5, suggesting that this deficit does not indicate a qualitative difference between children with and without SLI. Additionally, what this theory fails to explain is why children with SLI opt for the strategy of producing subject RCs with role reversal to take the place of targeted object RCs. To summarize, no previous SLI theory has been able to adequately account for the source of difficulty shown in the production of Mandarin RCs.Next, we turn to the question of what is the source of the impairment observed in children with SLI. As discussed previously, some researchers assume that the lack of relativization in the narrow syntax of children with SLI is the source of difficulty shown in RCs production e.g., . FurtherThe EFUH best captures the difficulty of producing RCs by Mandarin children with SLI. According to the EFUH, children with SLI can not specify the EFs, and this underspecification results in the RM effect and structural building-up error. EFUH assumes that children with SLI have EFs that are underspecified, and thus are insensitive to the EFs of both C and the relative head. The RM effect is caused by insensitivity to EFs of relative head, while the underspecification of EFs of C causes errors concerning functional category C. To be more precise, we argue that the impairment of knowledge concerning functional categories causes the difficulty in projecting full-fledged RCs.To begin with, children with SLI did make structural errors and omitted the embedding marker in 9 of their responses (6.9%) in the object RCs condition, whereas the TD children almost never did. The fact that the SLI children committed errors concerning the complementizer directly indicated that there is a deficiency with grammatical knowledge when it comes to the Complementizer.Second, this paper found that when SLI children struggled to produce target RCs, they adopted declarative sentences and sentence fragments as their primary avoidance strategies, indicating that children with SLI encountered severe difficulty projecting fully fledged RCs according to EFUH. Children with SLI can produce some targeted RCs according to the findings of the current study, though their ability is quite limited in comparison to their TD peers. As a result, there is no reason to claim that the use of declarative sentences and sentence fragments as avoidance strategies indicates a total lack of relativization in children with SLI. We maintain that children with SLI adopt these strategies because they can not fully specify the EF of C, resulting in the insensitivity to the semantic role of RCs.Restrictive RCs are traditionally considered as predicates according to Quine (1960) (quoted in The preceding argument is supported by a study of RC comprehension in Mandarin children with SLI (To summarize, this study discovered that Mandarin children with SLI had a subject over object RC advantage in production, and that their knowledge of RCs was seriously impaired. The EFUH can explain not only the subject-object RCs asymmetry, but also the nature of errors and avoidance strategies. Theoretically, this study shows that the EFUH captures more characteristics of children with SLI in producing RCs than previous theories. Practically, this study also establishes that RC production may be clinical markers of linguistic impairment, allowing children with SLI to be distinguished from their TD peers.The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Henan Normal University. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.HW and HY contributed equally to this study, including concept, experimental design, data collection, supervision, data analysis, and writing. Both authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.


Drawingvoice 2.0 is an instructional method of collaborative pencil and paper drawing to use in the school classroom, followed by Facebook interaction on the drawing produced in class. It is based on a participatory and meta reflective approach, explicitly aimed at deconstructing, negotiating, and reconstructing the meaning that students attribute to themselves regarding their professional expectations and educational pathways. In particular, the collaborative pencil and paper drawing allows for the student’s emotional symbolisation processes underlying their educational pathway. Drawingvoice 2.0 induces a multidimensional cognitive and meta-cognitive process further supported by the following interaction on Facebook. Therefore, the World Wide Web is the added resource for sharing and deepening the classmates’ discussion. Finally, Drawingvoice 2.0 supported structural group interaction and was an important supportive and instructional method to bring about transformational and developmental training practices. As the main result, in our experience, psychology students increased their reflectivity about their strengths and threats in being psychologists within their cultural contexts and potential positive resources underlying their choice. Drawingvoice 2.0 thus enhanced their self-awareness about the lights and shadows of their training and future professional career. The training career of university students is the object of many studies, and according to Eurostat , there aIn Italy, AlmaLaurea Interuniversity Consortium Report , in analAn increasing number of university courses have improved teaching by collecting, analyzing and showing "visual data" .This process was divided into various activities further described in the following paragraphs:Phase 1—classroom activities  on the materials and images included in the online group. The entire process also became the subject of discussion. Furthermore, in a final evaluation, many students discussed the results, and their reactions and suggestions were collected and analyzed.During Exercise I, the groups of students produced 12 drawings, while during Exercise II, there were 8. An image for each exercise was also uploaded spontaneously by the individual participants at the end of the online discussion procedure.Forty-nine students participated in this shared reflexivity experience; they were mainly females (84%) aged between 22 and 50 . They attended the ‘Methodology and Techniques of Community Psychology’ module of the Master's degree course in Dynamic Clinical and Community Psychology at the University of Naples—Federico II. The length of the whole module was 3 months, with attendance of three sessions a week.The group of participants represents the gender distribution among students enrolled in the degree course in Psychology. According to the qualitative approach Charmaz, , the aimEach session conducted by the class teacher was supported from time to time by a specific student in the role of observer, who took notes on the explanations of the drawings made by the authors in the classroom, writing a detailed report at the end of each session.These texts were then used to analyze the drawings and the process itself to understand their shared contents and meanings.Reading of texts, reports and drawings produced to familiarize themselves with the data and produce an initial detailed view of the content addressed and shared information. This phase was essential to make the individual group the focus of the analysis and become familiar with its narratives, both written and drawn.Multi-level semantic content analysis (amplification). Three types of annotations were produced: descriptive, linguistic and conceptual comments.Identification of emerging issuesThe drawings were finally analyzed by the teacher and by all the groups of students according to the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis Smith, ; the folRelevant dimensions and issues were identified about the theme of the year. They were organized into tables that allowed them to be grouped into macro-categories. Therefore, this analysis process was both analytical and theoretical, as it allowed us to interpret both textual and non-textual material, creating connections between emerging themes and to co-construct further knowledge.The evaluation papers presented by the students at the end of these activities were analyzed by the whole research team using the Thematic Analysis Method  designs the professional future  written by the students, related to the educational and learning path experienced during the Course. The conceptual themes were the following:Facebook was our means of communication, the representative of a collective work. […] It contributed to keeping the group always in contact; it allowed us to share information, videos, links, articles on classroom issues; it fostered comparison and dialogue through the exchange of comments and opinions .The students had always seen Facebook as a space for recreation and informal communication between friends. At the beginning of the course, all the students underlined the risks and the criticalities regarding Facebook’s positive aspects and potential. But in the end, the social network became a real resource:build a new 'we', more solid, more informed, more vital", but also more participatory and empowered in its internal resources, strengthened precisely by awareness and the strength of collective thinking.Using the words of Mantovani , the webAn innovative and engaging community psychology course. The most significant and representative elements of the experience being empowering and exciting were innovation, participation and reflection.Web support has become precious space–time continuity, capable of guaranteeing relational continuity and an open circuit of knowledge.Sharing, comparison and transformation were the words that dominated all the texts. Teamwork was recognized as the common thread of the whole process, establishing itself as a model of critical, multi-perspective and co-constructive interaction founded on awareness, reflexivity and negotiation.represented their role as psychologists, from a vision centered around the emotional, empathic and support skills of the psychologist  students moved from a focus on the negative as shown in Fig. ist Fig.  to the rist Fig. . (c) FinThe collaborative drawing and the subsequent online interaction became a teaching tool to co-construct knowledge, share emotional experiences and help students in focusing their resources and obstacles, building more lasting knowledge, as testified by the students themselves during the final briefings and through the reports written and delivered at the end of the course.Indeed, the transformative value of Drawingvoice 2.0 consists of activating in the students an increased awareness and acquisition of new meaning about their training-professional path and their future perspectives. Here it was significant to add a drawing made on the last day of the course by one of the students Fig. . It summFinally, the Drawingvoice 2.0 method is considered to be an experience of "cooperative learning" in which the teacher is not merely a transmitter of content. Moreover, learning-teaching relationships are never simple interactions but emotional-relational exchanges, constructions of meanings. According to a transdisciplinary and networking approach, learning is supported by multiple teaching intertwining in a "plural" way of mind and body, experience and reflexivity.The generalizability of the study results is subject to limitations because it is a qualitative and situated study; the student participants do not fully represent the views and insights applicable to other settings and parts of the world. The group of participants was not gender-balanced, and the type of sampling was not probabilistic.The results are correlated to specific geographic locations and specific university contexts and fields.The validity of the methodology was inferred from complex indicators, such as the average high level of exam marks (28/30); the number of students who participated in the first exam session (95%); the analysis of the drawings that highlighted its transformative value. Furthermore, the soft indicators considered were: the analysis of student reports that may have been "filtered" by emotional participation in the experience and enthusiasm for a new way of teaching. Despite this, further applications are required to confirm the validity and transformative value of the Drawingvoice 2.0 methodology.We referred to Drawingvoice 2.0 as a teaching method within an interactive, participatory and reflective methodology acquired by Fuks . The comDrawingvoice 2.0, thanks to the Facebook group created relationships of continuity and sharing among students. The potential of using web 2.0 in educational paths is already known in literature, and even if a solid educational value characterizes them, they are underestimated  to enable the students to express themselves as freely as possible;the sharing and the discussions on the Facebook group by actively participating was supported;activating a shared space of thought, at multiple levels, on the texts and drawings produced, and a meta-reflection on all the phases.It is to be mentioned that the drawing activity in class and the following discussion on Facebook was supported by:It enables students to take on "other" perspectives to co-construct a conscious and responsible learning process at multiple levels . Online collaborative learning is a challenge in distance learning.Therefore, a teaching strategy that includes class small group interaction and more comprehensive online interaction and reflection may empower the learning procedure. Moreover, in distance learning, the shared drawing activity may be done by small online subgroups if the teaching platform allows it. The strong message of our proposal is to implement teaching reflective participatory opportunities combining cognitive and emotional knowledge and participatory opportunity.For future applications, we emphasize that drawing, teamwork and web interaction are the keys to this teaching method applicable to all training contexts by teachers supported by psychological and group interaction knowledge.Moreover, in online teaching, Facebook as a shared platform will allow intergroup communication. At the same time, the classroom small team activity may be proposed for online use. In this way, reflectivity will, also be enhanced in distance learning, where pair/group interaction is usually reduced.


Foreign aid and remittances augment the income of economies. The present study examines the relationship between economic growth, poverty, inequality, remittances, and foreign aid in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries using panel data methods from 1991 to 2019. The study focuses on the MENA region due to the rise in labor immigration and significant foreign aid. The empirical findings reveal that remittances, foreign aid, and economic growth play a significant role in bringing down the MENA region’s poverty levels. Besides, a rise in income share accruing to the lowest quintile is observed despite the negative income growth, which indicates that on average, the income increased more rapidly of the poor in comparison to the non-poor households. Thus, the study finds evidence supporting the hypothesis that remittances and foreign aid augment per capita income and income share in the MENA member countries. The challenge of poverty eradication is one of the most considerable challenges faced by the world. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) put forth have replaced the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and poverty reduction remains central in the Post- 2015 Agenda –6.It is well documented that economic growth is a function of various factors such as foreign capital, population growth, inflation, unemployment rate, etc. . HoweverOne of the dynamic economic growth sources and development in emerging countries constitutes foreign aid as low foreign exchange revenues render insufficient social development and infrastructure projects. Some studies like  have fouStudies like , 17 advoAccording to , remittaHence, there are several ways in which the present study contributes to the literature. The majority of empirical studies on the impact of foreign aid and remittances on economic growth and poverty reduction have been carried out in the context of other countries or economic regions. Thus, there had been less focus on the MENA region, which is one of the major recipients of foreign aid. Secondly, the present study attempts to capture the underlying dynamics through the segregation of low-income and high-income MENA countries and examines the trends on a temporal basis, taking decade averages by partitioning the data. Thirdly, this study examines the impact of remittances, foreign aid, and economic growth on poverty reduction by considering two proxies, i.e., headcount ratio and poverty gap index, to establish the robustness of the results.In this study, the impact of economic growth, remittances, and foreign aid on poverty and the poverty gaps examined in MENA countries. The empirical work is done in MENA countries employing econometrics methods using ordinary least square (OLS) regression and panel random-effect models, and system-GMM using panel data to support the results’ robustness. The data spans the period from 1991 to 2019 based on its availability from the World Development Indicator of the World Bank database. The study is divided into six parts, and the rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews the existing literature on the relationship between poverty, inequality, foreign aid, remittances, and economic growth. Section 3 focuses on a comparison of macro and survey-based poverty measurement approaches in MENA countries. The data source and adopted methodologies have been discussed in Section 4. While section 5 presents results, and section 6 concludes the study.The relationship between inequality and growth remains under considerable disagreement. The earlier studies on the relationship between growth and inequality mainly followed the Kuznets hypothesis , 28. TheMoreover, this is the reason why economic growth helps in poverty alleviation. The empirical finding that growth and inequality are unrelated underlies the results in a critical study by , whose a examinedThus, it can be observed that the level of income inequality and economic growth in a region plays an important role in attaining poverty eradication.The literature on the impact of foreign aid has adopted a wide range of approaches and reached radically different conclusions. Let us take an example of two relevant studies that illustrate the diversity of the results.  found liWhether foreign aid helps reduce poverty and its gaps in MENA countries or not is still subjected to further exploration. Studies advocating the negative relationship between economic growth and foreign aid claim that due to the increased aid inflows, the consumption increases, and the domestic savings decrease, which hinders the recipient countries’ economic growth. The negative relation between economic growth and foreign aid may also result from various other factors like economic policy interventions, business cycles, government intervention, and dependability of foreign aid inflows in the poor beneficiary countries.  examined examined used sim studied  assessedRemittances constitute a significant source of financial flows for developing economies, and their effect on economic growth is being debated for a long. There is extensive literature examining the impact of remittances on economic growth and poverty alleviation, and the following section attempts to highlight some of them. Studies like  provide In contrast, studies like  have advRegarding the effect of remittances on poverty reduction, a study by  found a There are two approaches to poverty measurement, namely: Macro based and Survey based. The macro-based approach employs income, while household surveys use a consumption-oriented approach to measure poverty levels. One of the significant constraints faced by the researchers who try to identify the poverty in the MENA region is the absence of comparable and unavailability of the household surveys. This creates extreme difficulty in the identification of the extent of poverty in the region under study. As reported by , data onThe macro-based approach utilizes international and national poverty lines to measure the level of poverty. Both national and international poverty lines have their advantages and disadvantages. However, international poverty lines are more suitable for cross-country and temporal comparisons of poverty levels in different regions . NeverthSurvey-based and macro-based data tell a very different story when compared. For example, when measuring poverty in the African population,  found a Now the question which arises is which dataset is correct? Both of them have their fair share of problems, and hence, "neither of them" is the answer. Many reasons render both approaches leading to very different views on poverty levels and associated temporal trends. For example, the macro approach considers the measurement and modelling of national income at the aggregate level. Doing it within a country leads to many problems, especially in countries with extreme poverty. This is due to unmeasured or under-measured economic activity occurring in small–scale informal markets, which is extremely difficult to be accounted for by national account statisticians. At the same time, comparison across countries becomes extremely problematic as well. As indicated by , factorsAnother reason why macro data differs from survey-based data is the indicator used to measure poverty. As mentioned earlier, the internationally comparable income numbers can deviate from the consumption numbers that emerge from the household surveys. Both income and consumption follow different trajectories within a country. For example, in the short term, due to higher investment, the national incomes rise, but if the returns on the investment are low, then there may be no long-run gains in consumption. Secondly, the divergence between the two may occur due to primary commodities-oriented exports of many poor developing countries, as in Africa. Therefore, the nature of the product becomes a critical factor whenever a boom occurs. For example, due to the oil boom, much of the gains from an increase in income would be captured by the government. In contrast, for an agricultural boom, where income accrual occurs at small-scale farmers’ level, the results might paint a different picture.How does aid affect poverty? How do remittances affect poverty? These questions have been prominent in many development debates, in which opposing views have often relied heavily on macro data and panel methods. There are two main reasons why panel models have been more prominent in macro than micro-work in development.The first is that the data demands are considerable and the number of micro data sets for emerging countries, while far larger than it was 20 years ago, remains small. In contrast, the number of macro data sets, time being what it is, has been growing continuously. Also, many organizations produce macro data that is designed to be comparable across countries. Such sources now included data on financial aid received for development works and remittances received from non-residents. The comprehensive economic data world comprises the World Bank Development Indicators, the Penn World Tables, and the , 65 dataThe second reason is that governments want answers to questions that macro data can answer. High on the list of the questions in development that public-sector bodies want to be answered is whether it promotes growth and reduces poverty and, if it does not, what does? The relevant literature shows almost as many answers to those questions as studies on the subject. Clearly, a first step to answering those questions is to understand why so many different answers have been possible using very similar data, very similar specifications, and similar estimators. If empirical work is successful, the study would expect a narrowing of the possible answers to the questions posed, but that has not been happening.Also, the limited data on national household budget surveys pose a significant limitation, especially for smaller population developing countries that seldom conduct such surveys. Furthermore, in the countries where such data is available, it is only compiled for one year. In this aspect, a panel data set was collected for some countries by including additional information on income, poverty, remittances, and aid. Still, due to the limited period and data unavailability, some dataset was dropped. The panel approach resulted in an unbalanced panel allotting high weights to few observations on the remittances variable thus, abandoning the survey-based approach in favor of a macro data approach.This study uses balanced panel data of 21 MENA countries from 1991 to 2019 from the World Bank Database. The variables considered for the study are poverty headcount ratio as a proxy for poverty, per capita GDP as a measure of economic growth, Gini index as a measure of income inequality, foreign aid, and remittances as a percentage of the total GDP. According to , the heaFor the present study, GDP per capita has been used for measuring the economic growth of the MENA region, as with most previous literature on economic growth. It is defined as a measure of a country’s economic output accounted for its number of people. Mathematically, it is calculated by taking a ratio of the country’s GDP divided by its total population. Unlike GDP growth, GDP per capita is a better measure of the standard of living in a specific country. Growth in the production of goods and services is a primary determinant of how the economy is performing. GDP per capita shows the extent to which the total production of a country is shared among its population. Further, this indicator is helpful when the comparison among the countries is to be carried out.Although GDP per capita is the most widely used measure of living standards, it is also a target indicator for policy-driven analysis. However, it fails to consider the people’s well-being due to persisting income inequalities among the population. Therefore, to take care of the impact of income equalities among the MENA region, the Gini coefficient has been used to measure income inequality which is the most popular measure. The advantage of the Gini index is that inequality of the entire income distribution can be summarized using a single statistic between 0 and 1. This characteristic allows for comparison among the countries with different population sizes . AdditioThe empirical models are based on the poverty reduction equation in terms of headcount ratio and the poverty gap equation as follows.HCRit is the poverty headcount ratio at $1.90 a day, logEGit is the value of the natural log of per capita GDP, GIit refers to the Gini index , Net aid (logNAit) and remittances (Rit) are in the percentages of the total GDP. ϴt represents time fixed effects, and Ci is country fixed effects. All monetary values are expressed in real PPP US$ 2011 and β0, β1, β2, and β3 are parameters to be estimated, and Uit is the error term. However, in Eq   2) are  and its distribution among income classes. Thus, increasing income per capita will translate into a reduction in poverty for any given income distribution. However, this does not mean that all the income groups are affected equally because average growth does not necessarily translate into the growth of the poor’s incomes. According to , growth,MENA’s success in achieving minimal poverty rates by the 1980s and sustaining into the 1990s has been attributed to economic growth before the 1980s. The region’s oil-fired economic boom of 1975 to 1985 helped MENA reduce its poverty levels as the per capita GDP grew at 4.5% per year . The rapAs  has poinSimilarly, the Gini coefficient estimates are positive, which is expected as a rise in Gini coefficient means an increase in income inequality, leads to an increase in poverty level. The estimates and their magnitudes follow the literature  and are In this study, remittances are included as an explanatory variable as the study’s objective is to examine whether foreign aid enhances domestic savings in increasing gross investment in the economy. Foreign aid includes all the government aid aimed at promoting economic development and the welfare of the recipient economies. However, sometimes the recipient governments pursue non-developmental agendas and misallocate the funds to less important sectors than allocating them to the needful sectors. Our interest lies in whether foreign aid helps domestic savings in increasing gross investment in the economy. Therefore, remittances have been included as an explanatory variable for carrying out the analysis. In this study, panel data evidence shows that international migration/remittances and foreign aid are two key factors that have helped MENA countries maintain low poverty rates despite stagnant economic growth. MENA countries have received a significant amount of foreign aid that has been used by the government in various public sector activities (include government work and work for public sector enterprises) to keep people working and eventually come out of the poverty trap. In addition, beginning of the 1970s, the global migration to the European and Persian Gulf countries has also climbed, which has helped the poor throughout the MENA region boost their incomes. During the oil-fired economic boom in the late 1970s, the oil prices rose significantly, leading poor people from countries like Egypt and Jordan to Persian Gulf countries like Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, looking for high-compensating occupations in a diversity of labor-intensive sectors. Simultaneously, the migration to Western Europe took place from countries like Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia for the same reason. This resulted in a substantial effect of international remittances on the poverty levels across the MENA region. Therefore, foreign aid and international remittances on the poverty levels are examined in the following sections.In Hence, the results of the system GMM are robust to the random effect model. The increase in overall GDP per capita in the region is negatively associated with poverty headcount and the poverty gap in the middle east region. This is in line with the results finding by , 52, 68.The debate concerning foreign aid and international remittances in reducing poverty in the macro literature has been concerned with two major issues. The first has been how aid and remittances can be instrumented to find a casual effect. The second has been the role of policy and whether aid and remittances are effective only in suitable policy environments.The results are best understood as describing how foreign aid and remittances impact poverty and its depth over the period covered by the data, 1990 to 2019. The estimates imply that remittances can be shown to have impacted significantly on both the poverty and the poverty gap. However, the relationship between foreign aid and poverty reduction is negative but not statistically significant, maybe because of conditioning on the time-invariant growth rates across countries. The regressions imply, are much lower for countries receiving aid than for those not. That, of course, is not a surprise. The study expects, or at least hopes, that aid will be directed to poorer countries. However, the results imply that unconditional on these time-invariant factors, aid has not had such an effect, while our other parameters are highly significant. There remains much to learn as to how aid, policy, and growth are related.This study has used panel data to examine poverty, inequality, and economic growth in the MENA region. Further, it also examines the impact of foreign aid and remittances as the percentage share of GDP on poverty reduction and the poverty gap. It has four broad findings. First, the study reveals that the MENA countries have unusually low poverty rates compared to the developing world. Only 3.5% of the MENA region population live below the international poverty standard of $1.90 per person per day in 2010–2019. These enviable statistics related to poverty reduction are commendable; however, the more interesting observation of the MENA region is maintaining such low poverty rates even in times of sluggish economic growth. Achieving these poverty levels can be attributed mainly to the rapid income growth in the region prior to 1985. However, MENA has managed to prevent a sizeable increase in poverty despite its low economic growth. Second, the MENA region has become similar to other developing regions in the last 20 years regarding income distribution. Altogether, the region has had an increasing share of income among the bottom quintile of the population. Using panel data analysis, it is observed that high-income countries are more efficient in reducing poverty than low-income countries. This indicates that the countries with low-income inequality are better at poverty reduction than countries with high-income inequality . This heHowever, the present study is limited in its scope and does not reveal the future aspects of relationships among poverty, inequality, and growth for the MENA region. The question remains whether the MENA region would maintain low poverty levels in the absence of accelerated economic growth. The likelihood of this happening is very low because of multiple factors. The relationship between poverty as a response to income growth and its distribution is the same for other MENA economies. The underprivileged or needy will be benefited only in terms of a rise in their income when the share of income continues to rise for the poorest quantile in general.Moreover, the increase in income for the poor in MENA is significantly driven by the remittances and foreign aid received, as evidenced by the present study’s findings. As the competition increases from the other labor exporting countries in both the region’s foremost labor destinations, namely the European Region and the Arab Gulf region, and rising barriers, the remittances are getting affected, which creates a problem for the poor. Simultaneously, the fiscal constraints faced by MENA governments and the pressure to privatize are making it difficult for the regional countries to provide public employment.However, a modest increase in economic growth is expected to substantially reduce poverty incidence due to the relatively equal income distributions in the region. Therefore, policymakers’ challenge is to determine methodologies to speed up growth while maintaining the maximum extent possible the distributional benefits achieved by the poor in the last 30 years of the MENA region.S1 Data(XLS)Click here for additional data file.S1 Appendix(DOCX)Click here for additional data file.


The coronavirus disease that emerged in 2019 (COVID-19) has affected health, societies and economies. Policies that have been imposed by different countries to slow the spread of the disease, including national lockdowns, curfews, border closures and enforcement of social distancing measures have disturbed the drug supply chain and resulted in drug shortages. Uncertainty concerning the pandemic has also led to the panic buying of drugs and the stockpiling of drugs in households, which has amplified the problem. In this cross-sectional study, a self-developed questionnaire was distributed online in order to a) assess the practice of household drug stockpiling prior to the national lockdown in Jordan, b) investigate the factors affecting it and c) measure peoples’ knowledge about the consequences of this behaviour. Results from this study show that drug purchasing was reported by 44.3% of the participants and was most common among participants from non-medical backgrounds  or those who have chronic diseases  and taking chronic supplements  regardless of their age, gender, living area or the possession of health insurance. Analgesics and antipyretics were the most frequently purchased drugs  and anticipation of their need was the most common reason for purchasing drugs . Buyers were also less aware, when compared to non-buyers, that panic buying and drug stockpiling may lead to drug shortages  and that this behaviour can pose a health hazard, especially to children . Our study shows that panic buying of drugs and household drug stockpiling were common in Jordan during the COVID-19 pandemic and this was related to participants’ medical knowledge and educational backgrounds. Therefore, educating the general population regarding rational drug use is urgently needed. This is also a compelling case for the development of national guidelines for drug management that target the general population and healthcare personnel, especially pharmacists, to avoid drug shortages during crises. Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), it has been affecting health, societies and economies . SymptomDue to the lack of certainty regarding the treatment and prevention of the virus, and in order not to overwhelm the healthcare system, most countries imposed complete lockdowns. Other safety measures were also imposed, which included the enforcement of social distancing, such as curfews; working from home, reduced working hours for those who had to be at their place of work, reduced manpower, the closure of non-essential shops, and border closures along with the cancellation of non-essential travel. Applying these lockdowns and safety measures proved to be effective and resulted in the significant decline of the infection rate and the reduction in mortality, especially when such measures were applied early .Although the FDA has approved the first drug, remdesivir, for certain patients  and seveDue to the lockdowns, many factories, including drug factories, were closed worldwide at the beginning of the pandemic or operated with a lower capacity . China, Panic buying and stockpiling have affected many items, such as groceries, food, sanitisers, disinfectants and protective equipment, including face masks and gloves, around the world and have led to acute shortages for these items, leaving people in need with no means to obtain them. During this time, people might feel that the situation is out of their hands which generates many concerns, anxiety, and fear about resources insufficiency. Therefore, people act with their primitive instincts and tend to panic buy to mitigate this anxiety and fears . If suchPatients, especially with chronic diseases, need to always have a supply of their respective drugs. Other drugs, such as pain killers and emergency drugs, also need to be available during lockdowns and curfews. People are encouraged to hold an adequate amount of essential drugs without buying excessively or stockpiling . HoweverAlthough the pharmaceutical industry in Jordan is considered to be one of the best in the region, Jordanian manufacturers export most of their production of drugs overseas and only a small percentage is left for the local market. This percentage is not sufficient for meeting the national demand, and therefore, most of the drugs that are used domestically in Jordan are still imported . The genThis study aims to assess the behaviour of the general population in Jordan in regard to the stockpiling and panic buying of drugs during the week before the full national lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, investigate the factors affecting it and measure their knowledge about the consequences of this behaviour.This descriptive, online cross-sectional study was conducted at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in Jordan, during the 3-day national full lockdown period. This study measured the behaviours of panic buying and drug stockpiling by the general population during the week before the full national lockdown in which the Jordanian government declared the state of emergency to limit the spread of COVID-19 and at the end of which a formal announcement about the lockdown was made. The study protocol is approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the School of Medicine at Al-Balqa Applied University.® online sample calculator  and living in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. According to the Jordanian Department of Statistics and the real-time world statistic platform Worldometer, the estimated population of Jordan in 2020 was around 10,200,000. Of them, 55% are adults and 91.5% live in urban areas . Applyinlculator  with a rvia different social media platforms. Participants were recruited via a convenient sampling method where participants were invited to voluntarily and anonymously complete and then submit their responses. The link to the questionnaire was available for 3 days only  and all responses were considered for analysis.A self-administered questionnaire was created using Google Forms and distributed online After a comprehensive review of the literature, and due to the paucity of data and studies in this subject, a self-developed questionnaire was established and validated for this study depending on the aims of the study, the information required to be collected and the targeted population.The questionnaire was developed in Arabic, and it consisted of 20 questions that were equally important and weighted the same. Questions were written simple, clear, short, and in a layperson language. All questions were close-ended with multiple choices and, depending on the question, participants were allowed to choose only one or more than one answer. Two of the questions had an open-ended choice to allow participants to elaborate upon their responses if they wish to. The questionnaire was divided into four sections to collect information concerning participants’ demography, social and health-related information, along with their practices, attitudes and knowledge concerning the subject of panic buying and the stockpiling of drugs during the crisis.After the questionnaire was constructed, a panel of three experts in pharmacy, medicine and community medicine was formed to review the questionnaire for language or grammar mistakes, construction errors, or anything that might be considered unethical or offensive and then modifications were made where necessary. A pilot test was then carried out on 30 individuals who gave suggestions to improve a few questions and, at the same time, judged the face validity of the questionnaire. After the pilot run and the application of the final modifications, the panel re-assessed and evaluated the content validity of the questionnaire.Before disseminating the questionnaire, A cover letter was attached to it that described the aims of this study, how responses would be submitted anonymously, and how data would be treated and analysed confidentially. There was also a statement that read: “Participation in this study is voluntary and by completing and submitting this form, participants are providing us with consent to use their data for this study.”X2 was used to determine the level of significance between two or more variables. p values below 0.05 were considered significant.Data were analysed using IBM SPSS statistics (version 26) predictive analytics software. Descriptive analysis, including frequency and percentage, was used for the categorical variables. Chi-square One thousand and twenty  questionnaires were properly completed and 17 were excluded as one participant was not living in Jordan and 16 were younger than 18 years.p > 0.05; p < 0.05; Out of the included 1,003 responses, 444 participants (44.3%) stated that they bought drugs during the week before the full national lockdown in which the Jordanian government declared the state of emergency to limit the spread of COVID-19 and at the end of which a formal announcement about the lockdown was made. Participants were from all age groups, both genders and lived across the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, but the decision to buy drugs was not affected by participants age, sex or living area (p < 0.05). Most participants were fully or partially covered by medical insurance. However, whether the participant had medical insurance or not did not influence the participants’ decision  or take regular drugs or supplements that are not related to a chronic disease , and this significantly affected their decision to buy drugs or not (N = 283) of the non-buyers and 72.3% (N = 321) of buyers were happy about their decisions (N = 359) paid directly to the pharmacy and the rest were either covered by their medical insurance and government exemption of payment or got free medical samples or medical aids (N = 318), analgesics and antipyretics were the most frequently bought classes of drugs. . However, a significantly higher percentage of participants from medical backgrounds were against self-medication  in terms of their attitudes concerning self-medication for the treatment of COVID-19 (p > 0.05). However, these practices were significantly affected by participants’ knowledge, with a higher percentage of non-buyers being aware that drug stockpiling would create the risk of drug shortages and/or harm to children. (p < 0.05; Knowledge regarding the consequences of purchasing drugs and stockpiling was not influenced by participants’ medical backgrounds (Almost half of the participants in our study stockpiled drugs just prior to the lockdown. In such cases, the drugs were mainly used for the management of chronic conditions, supplements, antibiotics, analgesics. In a country such as Jordan, with limited resources and a high dependence on other countries for the supply of generic drugs or raw materials, a sudden increase in demand within the local market amid international restrictions on trade will jeopardize the availability of drugs. This behaviour was irrelevant to participants’ age, gender, living area or educational level. However, in a study conducted in Brazil, male gender, higher socioeconomic status and younger age were correlated with a higher prevalence of panic buying . The effFindings from our study show a higher percentage of people from non-medical backgrounds rarely stockpile drugs in normal conditions compared to people from a medical background. However, the percentage of buyers was significantly higher than non-buyers for participants with a non-medical background. This implies that these drugs were not part of the health care plan for people from non-medical backgrounds, though they were purchased during the pandemic. This, therefore, suggests the importance of medical knowledge in determining the behaviour of consumers during a crisis. In Indonesia, a study conducted on people who practised panic buying during COVID-19 concluded that knowledge is a key factor affecting this behaviour . Resultsvia media and stimulate consumers from non-medical backgrounds to stockpile drugs, which subsequently cause them to be more positive to the idea of self-medication with COVID-19 drugs and supplements if they could acquire them as shown in our results. A similar case was reported in China where a woman who did not have COVID-19 self-medicated with hydroxychloroquine sulfate and was admitted to the intensive care unit suffering from cardiac arrhythmias (Consumers from non-medical backgrounds are easily influenced by traditional and/or social media, concerns from being infected with the coronavirus, or rumours of the possible efficacy of certain drugs/supplements, and the possibility of lockdowns. In a study, Arafat and others collected information from traditional media reports about panic buying during the early stages of COVID-19 and showed that there was a high abundance of reports that mentioned panic buying and showed photos of empty shelves . Such anhythmias . Therefohythmias . Pharmachythmias .The most purchased drugs were analgesics and antipyretics, followed by chronic medications, and vitamins and supplements. However, in Germany, the surge in purchasing drugs during the pandemic was highest for anti-Parkinson’s disease drugs and tranquillizers . In AustOur study revealed that 81% of the consumers paid themselves for the drugs, though most of them were covered by medical insurance. This demonstrates a high degree of willingness to purchase drugs even during an economically challenging condition. This behaviour can be interpreted as a coping mechanism during stressful conditions in order to maintain the health of one’s family or to act in a fashion similar to other members of the community .An important finding from our study is that 73.7% of the buyers stated that they will keep unused drugs in the household until the expiry date passes, despite their knowledge of the safety concerns that this might pose if drugs were not stored or disposed of properly. A cross-sectional study from Jordan by Naser et al. shows that most households in Jordan inappropriately deal with the drugs in their household in terms of storage or disposal .The major strength of our study is its originality. Due to the lack of similar studies, this research would be a backbone for future studies that highlight such important issues in such challenging times. On the other hand, our study has certain limitations including the small number of participants and the fact that panic purchasing of drugs was studied from the patients’ perspective only. With this in mind, future studies must be carried out with a larger sample size and from the pharmacists’ perspective, too. In addition, investigation of drug shortages during the pandemic will shed more light on the different aspects of the problem and possibly establish a clear connection to the panic buying of drugs during the same period.via social media. National guidelines for drug management, drug security and rational drug use during crises that target both consumers and pharmacists, are urgently needed and should be available for future needs. Additionally, it is necessary to impose stricter measures to increase compliance with The Drug and Pharmacy Law that controls the drug dispensing from pharmacies to promote rational drug use.The coronavirus pandemic has been a unique experience that revealed the vulnerability of humans in front of this dangerous and universal threat. The desire to secure drugs in case of a lockdown, the prospect of drug shortages and possible infection of COVID-19, caused consumers to buy excess amounts of drugs in order to feel secure, which served as a coping mechanism during the stressful conditions emanating from the pandemic. Pharmacists must play a role in providing alternatives for patients in case of drug shortages, which should comprise remote pharmaceutical care services and the provision of correct information and knowledge concerning the circulated material available


The current study aims to identify unhealthy behaviors among university students, establish means of detection of unhealthy behavior, identify obstacles to digital volunteering, and explore the relationship between volunteer preferred style of volunteering and the obstacles to volunteering. Data for the study was gathered by administering an unstructured, anonymous questionnaire to 207 female university students and staff. The survey design included questions about sociodemographic characteristics, views on different facets of volunteering, unhealthy behaviors, and correlation between volunteering and unhealthy behaviors. The results revealed unhealthy behavior detected by the respondents (51.7%). Twenty-eight (13.5%) of the 207 respondents reported using social media in detecting women with offending behavior. The value of Pearson's R is 0.245; thus, it is considered as weak or no correlation. There is hence no correlation between how respondents preferred volunteer work and the obstacle to volunteering. There is not much difference in the obstacles to volunteering faced by respondents despite their preferred style of volunteering. The findings reveal that digital volunteering effectively gains ground in detecting and managing unhealthy behaviors among university students. Much more could be achieved through digital volunteering if more awareness is created and volunteering programs are designed to be more interesting and less time-consuming to allow more students to participate. The outlook of volunteering is gradually changing in the twenty-first century in manners that bring significant problems and opportunities for managing the disaster. Particularly, shifts in the pattern of paid jobs, values and lifestyles, and the latest technology have resulted in a decrease in “conventional,” high-commitment, long-term volunteering and an increase in more vast, flexible and periodic patterns of volunteering. According to , 2, “theRising adulthood as the phase of life to which students of higher education belong matches a phase of personality development and education in the corporal, mental, family, sexual, emotional, and communal domains . NeverthDigital volunteering offers immense potentials for disaster management in the aspect of disaster announcement and challenges and risks , 15. MajLatest technologies have therefore opened up “virtual spaces” for volunteer activism and participation that give an authority podium for people “to make their voices heard, to coordinate activities across the globe and to mobilize public opinion” . From thThe enormous impact of novel communications technology is another revolution that has extensive inferences because unofficial, postdisaster volunteering comes about, and incontestably all disaster volunteering. The United Nations Volunteer program states that “technological developments are opening up spaces for people to volunteer in ways that have no parallel in history” . ElectroUnhealthy behavior refers to any action an individual takes with intensity or at a rate that raises the risk of injury or disease . It mighThe objective of the study is to identify unhealthy behavior among university students; establish the means of detection of unhealthy behavior; identify the obstacles to volunteering; obtaining the relationship between volunteer preferred style of volunteering and the obstacles to volunteering.In order to gather data for the study, an anonymous structured questionnaire was administered to both students and staff at Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. 207 validly filled questionnaires were retrieved. The respondents were all females within the age range from 18 to more than 35 years.The questionnaire for this study was developed by the authors . It was The data was collected by using the self-administered questionnaire . It consThe demographic characteristics of the respondents revealed ages ranging from 18 years to above 35 years. It is not surprising that the marital status of most (92.8%) of the respondents was single as the sample population comprised mainly students  of the respondents had their source of income from university rewards; this is followed by 25.1% of the respondents whose source of personal income was from all of the university rewards, parents, and grandparents. Others had their personal source of income ranging from monthly salary, husband, internship, donation and alms, business, social security, charities, and other sources as listed in With regard to the mode of volunteering, it seems that online life affected the expected voluntary behaviors. Results showed that 30% of the respondents prefer to volunteer through groups. This percentage was expected to be more, but it was less due to the online life period since students cannot meet and work in groups. The results also show that most of the respondents nowadays prefer electronic volunteering due to the limitation of gathering and outdoor activities .Lack of time constitutes the greatest obstacle to digital volunteering, representing almost half (48.8%) of the entire data, while lack of conviction/interest/time constitutes the least obstacle (0.5%). Other factors that hinder digital volunteering, as shown by the table, include lack of time + weak interest (15.0%), lack of awareness, and culture (7.2%) .University administration has a positive role in the development of volunteering work. It is also observed that volunteering positively affects university volunteers. This is seen as most of the respondents agreed that volunteering enabled them to develop enough interest to strive to continually update their information as development in the field persists. Most respondents reported enhanced communication skills; other positive roles include improved ability to tackle problems and development of basic skills in the use of technology, as shown in From When considering the most widely used methods of communication, Twitter is the most widely used method of communication as 50% (14) of the respondents (28) make use of it. This was followed by both Twitter and Instagram and Twitter, Snapchat, Phone calls, YouTube, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and Telegram, which were utilized by 3 (1.4%) of the respondents each. 2 (1%) of the respondents use Snapchat as a medium of communication, another 2 (%) of them utilize Twitter coupled with surfing the web; 1 (0.5%) of the respondents browse the web only as a means of communication (Most of the respondents (70) who do volunteer work do it in the Princess Nourah University and have revealed to have helped detect unhealthy behavior among women. Others carry out their volunteering work at Community development association (11), charitable association (5), outside the university (10), and both within and outside the university (21); the only respondent who carries out volunteer work electronically has not helped to detect any kind of unhealthy behavior .As shown in axis: directing Volunteer efforts of the students, professors and human resources at the university for early detection of offending behavior in the university and establish a mechanism to reduce it; the fourth axis: reasons for participation and assistance mechanism to detect the offending behavior in the university by those who actually participated.With regard to the correlation between the four themes/axes of this study, we have the following. The first axis: the importance of volunteer work from the point of view of the volunteer; the second axis: the reasons for the existence of the phenomenon of offending behaviors on campus from the point of view generally volunteers; third From This study was of clearly stated objectives. The features of the respondents were well represented; randomized sampling was also utilized; since the sample profile is composed of students, this enables easy access and low cost for data collection. On the other hand, a limited number of previous studies related to this topic was reported.Arab News reported that “the majority of Saudi youth would be more than willing to get involved in volunteer work, according to a survey” [As comparing this study with other previously reported studies, the results of this study showed that youth and young adults form a greater part of volunteering. This is not surprising as the  survey” . VolunteContrary to Sills' classic study on volunteering , people On a global scale, there is rising anticipation that volunteers will cover a bigger responsibility in disaster management and disaster risk diminution in time to come than it has in the past. This is propelled by an increasing global focus on creating “resilience to disasters through a “bottom-up” process in the form of volunteer initiatives rooted in the community” . Lately,Nevertheless, the outlook of volunteering is gradually shifting in the twenty-first century in manners that bring significant problems and chances for disaster management. Particularly, shifts in the pattern of paid jobs, values, and lifestyles, and the latest technology has resulted in a reduction in “traditional,” time-consuming, high dedication volunteering and an increase in more vast, flexible and periodic patterns of volunteering . ConsideVolunteering definitions are changing, alongside the act of volunteering , 42. In The findings reveal that digital volunteering is effectively gaining ground in the detection and management of unhealthy behaviors among university students. Much more could be achieved through digital volunteering if more awareness is created and volunteering programs are designed to be more interesting and less time-consuming to allow more students to participate. Based on these facts, this study hereby makes the following recommendations: more opportunities should be given to students to participate in volunteering work. There should be proper awareness and orientation about new and existing volunteering work. Students should be encouraged to participate in digital volunteering. Students should be afforded opportunities to volunteer outside the university and access the diversity of volunteer opportunities. There should be partnerships among the university, institutions, and volunteer associations, which will give another character to female students and develop extracurricular thinking skills for female volunteers, as there are specializations that pay more attention to this aspect, as is the case in the disciplines of social service, psychology and others. Volunteer programs should be designed to be less time-consuming and more interesting to students while serving the purpose for which there were created.


Background and Objectives: Recently, many studies have focused on the early detection of Parkinson’s disease (PD). This disease belongs to a group of neurological problems that immediately affect brain cells and influence the movement, hearing, and various cognitive functions. Medical data sets are often not equally distributed in their classes and this gives a bias in the classification of patients. We performed a Hybrid feature selection framework that can deal with imbalanced datasets like PD. Use the SOMTE algorithm to deal with unbalanced datasets. Removing the contradiction from the features in the dataset and decrease the processing time by using Recursive Feature Elimination (RFE), and Principle Component Analysis (PCA). Materials and Methods: PD acoustic datasets and the characteristics of control subjects were used to construct classification models such as Bagging, K-nearest neighbour (KNN), multilayer perceptron, and the support vector machine (SVM). In the prepressing stage, the synthetic minority over-sampling technique (SMOTE) with two-feature selection RFE and PCA were used. The PD dataset comprises a large difference between the numbers of the infected and uninfected patients, which causes the classification bias problem. Therefore, SMOTE was used to resolve this problem. Results: For model evaluation, the train–test split technique was used for the experiment. All the models were Grid-search tuned, the evaluation results of the SVM model showed the highest accuracy of 98.2%, and the KNN model exhibited the highest specificity of 99%. Conclusions: the proposed method is compared with the current modern methods of detecting Parkinson’s disease and other methods for medical diseases, it was noted that our developed system could treat data bias and reach a high prediction of PD and this can be beneficial for health organizations to properly prioritize assets. Parkinson’s disease (PD), a condition that affects the elderly more than people at other ages, comes after Alzheimer’s disease and results from neurological disorders ,2. In 20In addition, numerous soft computing methods have been proposed in studies on predicting PD for enhancing the prediction accuracy and reducing the error rate. These technologies include deep learning (DL) , geneticThis paper addresses the aforementioned problems to provide a highly accurate prediction system by identifying the main factors affecting PD. We used a complex method of PD prediction that relies on three major steps: balancing, feature selection, and model optimisation. In the data balancing step, unbalanced class allocation was treated using the synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE).k parameter value for solving optimisation problems applied to four datasets of patient with PD [Pramanik et al.  used enh with PD . In addi with PD . Quan et with PD  suggesteRaza et al.  presenteStudies have reported that the effectiveness of a PD detection system mainly depends on the enhancement of classifier recognition and accuracy. However, the problems of unbalanced data, noise, and redundant features are not effectively optimised. Hence, these problems can cause a considerable loss in the detection accuracy. Moreover, the result of this study can indicate the potential for improving PD detection system with several ML models. (1)Pre-processing of a PD dataset,(2)splitting,(3)theoretical contexts of several ML techniques,(4)hyper-parameter settings, and,(5)evaluation of ML performance across different metrics.The methodology used to solve the problems in the PD dataset is described. The principal steps involved in the proposed methodology are to develop a highly efficient ML system to enhance imbalance datasets. Our proposed methodology includes five phases:The methodology is illustrated in The PD dataset comprised 756 samples and 753 features. This dataset can be accessed by the UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository . The PD Differences in the original data between positive and negative patients for a PD dataset are presented in Data pre-processing involves a set of suboperations comprising several procedures that can be applied to datasets for analysis and formation. Thus, data pre-processing is a vital step in the data mining system . In thisThe common problem with medical data is imbalance because the number distribution of patients is lower than that of the control group, which leads to a problem in ML classification. In our dataset, the ratio of non-patients has the large majority in classes, which can lead to bias in the classification accuracy towards only the non-patients. To resolve this problem, SOMTE is a powerful ML technique with the key concept of randomly generating new samples among minority group samples and their neighbours, which increases the number of minority group samples and causes the class to be balanced . SMOTE, Selecting the features that are applicable or most important to the classification problems is critical to determine the categories required. Thus, PD classification is complex because of which there is an expansion of needless or unrelated features. If the entire dataset containing numerous features is used, calculations become laborious and time consuming. Therefore, in this study, the future selection technique was applied as an important process in the pre-processing stage. Hence, the number of features must be minimised to obtain the most important features useful for the initial step in the learning procedure of the model, which leads to an easy understanding of the results and an increase in the classification accuracy, while simultaneously improving the overall performance of the model. Two methods are used for feature selection and are described in the following subsection.The PD dataset contains 752 features; if all these features are used in training, the processing time increases and predictability decreases. Furthermore, the problems such as duplicate features, ineffective features, and great contrast between features can be confronted . To resoWe can interpret the implementation of the RFE as follows:Step 1. Construct a feature set with function vectors so that each row matches to a sample, and each column matched to an attribute.Step 2. Use control parameters to create the RFE method with 10-fold validation.Step 3. Use RFE to sort these features according to their relation with the target.Step 4. Based on the results for the highest impact features, select the first N (number of features) with the highest correlation with the target as the new feature of the data, and remove the lowest correlation with the target from the data.PCA is primarily based on a statistical–mathematical approach that uses an eigenvector for minimising the size of a record set, which includes more than one variable associated with different retaining and the highest variance inside the dataset ,27. PCA Furthermore, in PCA, the dimensional reduction concept is utilised for image compression, computer vision, and facial recognition. It also presents a wide range of applications in determining the high-dimensional record patterns related to data mining, finance, psychology, and bioinformatics ,28,29,30The feature values in the PD dataset have different ranges, which leads to noise in classification performance. Therefore, normalisation is performed on the dataset  to set tIn this Section, the theoretical contexts of the four ML classification techniques are described and explained.t X + b = +1) for high dimensional and (Wt X + b = −1) for low dimensional. The supper vector is the data on the separate line when the line is the decision boundary [Support vector machine (SVM) can be defined as a supervised learning method, whose working mechanism depends on classification, external detection, and regression by training data; it can also be used to solve binary and multiple classification problems. Moreover, a task assigned to this algorithm is to solve the problems of linear and nonlinear data. For the training data, it is used to separate the data into two groups with high and low dimensions, and the gap between the two groups is called the hyperplane. The optimal hyperplane can measure the space between two dimensional by using two equations (Wboundary .Multilayer perceptron (MLP) is an algorithm of the neural network character, which shows flexibility, reliability, and nonlinearity in performance. This algorithm comprises three layers of neural networks; the first layer enters the primary data and transfers the data to the second layer, which is called the hidden layer. This layer processes and sends the data to the last layer that provides the final prediction. A benefit of this algorithm is that it can adapt itself and learn from the nonlinear data. Moreover, it can predict the invisible data and large databases and provide satisfactory results .(1)In this method, one of the advantages of bootstraps slightly varies, unlike in other assembly methods.(2)In the bootstraps, the number of bootstraps cannot be counted.Bagging is an ensemble method with a strong and effective character in learning. This method uses a set of algorithms by learning, and afterwards, its work is classified. The packing method faces two challenges during its main operation: This results in some extra classifiers that lead to a decrease in the classification speed, a decrease in the packing efficiency, and an increase in the memory capacity, which is different from other assembly methods .K-nearest neighbours’ algorithm (K-NN) is a type of ML algorithm subject to supervision, classification, and pattern recognition. This algorithm relies on classification and efficiency accuracy of proximity and neighbour points. In addition, its internal structure is complex, and its ability to read is not strong. Its local geometry, dimensions, and quantum state resulting from the logical quantum line in the unspecified qubits are registered. Compared with the classical quantitative algorithm, k-NN can use an increased amount of data and a quantum property to store the data, thus reducing and enlarging the allocated data area .Each ML classification model requires one or more criteria, which manage (efficacy) the predictive consequences of the classifier. Selecting fine values for these parameters is highly challenging and requires the search of an exchange of among model generalisation and model complexity . In gridThe evaluation process can be used to assess the validity and accuracy of these constructed models acquired through the following classification counters:True positive (TP) indicates the number of accurately rated positive samples.False positive (FP) indicates the number of negative and correctly classified samples.True negative (TN) denotes the number of positive and incorrectly classified samples.False negative (FN) is the number of incorrectly classified samples for the negative class.Four evaluation measures are used to assess the results of classifiers, which depend on the following four classification counters:Accuracy: It is used to determine classifier effectiveness from the correct expected percentage, as shown in Equation (2).Sensitivity: It is the percentage of the accurately classified positive samples with PD and is called as the TP rate (TPR). It can be calculated as shown in Equation (3).Specificity: It is the percentage of the negative samples without any correctly classified PD and is called as the TN rate (TNR). It is calculated as presented in Equation (4).Precision: It is an important metric for accuracy measurement and defines the percentage of cases, which are identified as positive by the classifier, for the relationship between total predictive positive states, as shown in Equation (5).All these experimental measures are insufficient to rely on to assess learners within an unbalanced data set. Accuracy is a misleading evaluation metric for the majority class and seldom predicts the parameters belonging to the minority class. For the classification problems involving unbalanced class distribution, we seek highly comprehensive evaluation by considering various aspects comprising the measurement of the classifier ability to attain a balance between two classes and considering both classes to be similar . In our G-mean: It is a function used to filter the optimum classification between two classes. A benefit of this function is that it minimises the negative category when the false-positive results increase. Moreover, the arithmetic mean is considered an important measure for sensitivity and specificity determination . SensitiAUC is particularly used in binary classification to determine the optimum model for category prediction; in the AUC score, a threshold is employed to calculate the ratio of the TP rate and FP rate.This section presents the results obtained using the PD datasets defined in Among the four considered classifiers, MLP and K-NN provided the highest and lowest accuracy rates, respectively. Consequently, the proposed method considerably influenced accuracy rate enhancement for the four classifiers. The overall performance results showed that the proposed technique can work successfully with various classification models. All the classifiers were implemented using default parameters provided in The ROC curve analysis or AUC is also a good evaluative measure for determining the performance of various class classification methods at the enter data stage. We adopted AUC to evaluate the performance of all classifiers. The ROC curve is plotted against TP and FP rates . The SVMThe approach proposed to detect PD provided convincing results for solving the unbalanced data problem and finding the most relevant features. However, it is exciting to compare our approach with recent studies. In this regard, few recent studies on PD detection techniques were compiled and compared with our study. Compared with the other studies, the optimum accuracy with few features was obtained using our proposed approach . Thus, tThe major limitation of this study is the small number of patients (107 men and 81 women) with a lack of the laboratory results. Within a measurable population range, the pre-diction accuracy of 87.4 was achieved. However, numerous variables can directly or circuitously affect the classification model. Because most medical datasets are unbalanced, the outcome for the number of the uninfected patients is considerably larger than that of the infected patients, which leads to a prediction bias. Furthermore, a large feature distribution causes noise and an increase in the pre-processing time; all these problems can result in a substantial loss in the detection accuracy. Therefore, the information was imbalanced; thus, we balanced it by using SMOTE. The performance of these models may be progressed by using relatively more data.With the rapid development in the field of biomedicine, ML classification has played an increasingly fundamental role. ML models can help enhance the classification accuracy and evaluation reliability and reduce potential misunderstandings, in addition to making predictions highly efficient. In this study, two recent datasets for the patients with PD and control subjects were used to predict PD. A major problem with ML in the medical dataset is that the data collected is highly unbalanced, and thus additional capabilities are required to appropriately overcome bias distribution. To resolve this problem, several ML methods, such as SMOTE (over-sampling) technique, and two methods for feature selection, RFE and PCA, are used to predict PD. Moreover, advanced models have been evaluated for accuracy, precision, G-mean, sensitivity, and specificity. For classify positive or negative PD cases, supervised ML models were developed in this study with MLP, SVM, the Bagging classifier, and KNN. For the overall evaluation performance of the models, the train–test split approach was applied to the original and pre-processing data. The optimal evaluation metrics was obtained with the original data by using the KNN model with the accuracy of 87%. MLP with the pre-processing data reached both the accuracy and precision of 95%. Furthermore, the model developed with SVM optimisation was the optimal model among all the models developed for accuracy (98.22%). Future studies with other PD features obtained from other sites must be performed to validate these findings. We only analysed the samples from the Istanbul audio dataset. Moreover, the proposed approach improved the accuracy compared with the same dataset used in previous studies. Furthermore, this methodology was applied onto and evaluated on the small number of patients from the Istanbul audio dataset, which comprises the highly distributed and unbalanced data. In the future, we will concentrate on the use of other strategies, such as cost sensitivity, in combination with other methods as an alternative to resolve the imbalance problem of the medical dataset class.In conclusion, the proposed method is compared with existing modern methods for PD detection and other approaches for medical diseases. Comparative analyses showed that the proposed method recognises patients with PD more effectively than its counterparts.