The victimisation of adolescents in digital contexts represents an increasing social and scientific concern. Among the most severe risks is online grooming is a manipulative process through which adults establish deceptive emotional connections with minors to facilitate sexual exploitation (Craven et al., 2006; De Santisteban et al., 2017). Adolescence is a critical period for understanding this phenomenon, as it encompasses psychosocial characteristics such as heightened emotionality, impulsivity, and identity exploration (Salmela-Aro, 2011; Baumgartner et al., 2010), which may amplify exposure to online risks.

Adopting a developmental victimology perspective (Finkelhor, 1995; Piquero, 2015), this study examined how risk factors for online grooming vary across adolescence. Using a quantitative, cross-sectional design, data were collected from 240 adolescents aged 12–19, divided into early-to-mid (12–15) and mid-to-late (16–19) adolescence. Individual (self-esteem, impulsivity, negative emotionality), relational (parental supervision, family relationships), behavioural (risky online behaviours), and prior victimisation factors (cyberbullying) were analysed.

The results identified three main predictors of online grooming victimisation: engagement in risky online behaviours (OR=1.21; SE=0.05; p=<.001), gender (OR=2.49; SE=0.36; p=.012), and previous (cyber)bullying victimisation (OR=2.21; SE=0.32; p=.012). Developmental comparisons revealed that while these predictors were still significant among younger adolescents, only risky behaviours retained predictive power among older participants.

The findings highlight that vulnerability to grooming is developmentally dynamic, shaped by both psychosocial maturation and contextual autonomy. These results underscore the importance of age-specific prevention strategies that promote emotional regulation, digital literacy, and parental mediation to mitigate adolescents’ susceptibility to online grooming.

Background: The principle of the best interests of the child, enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), is a cornerstone of child protection systems. However, translating this principle into everyday practice remains challenging, particularly in contexts with different institutional structures and cultural values. This study builds on research conducted in Lithuania and Latvia during an Erasmus placement, which established partnerships with practitioners and provided direct, context-embedded access to both systems.

Objective: This study examines how social workers in Lithuania and Latvia assess and operationalize the best interests principle in child protection, with a focus on assessment processes, frameworks, and systemic factors that shape child-centered practice.

Methods: This study employed a qualitative, theory-informed design, collecting data through semi-structured interviews with 10 practitioners (micro and macro-level roles) and a document analysis of national legal frameworks and methodological guides. Fieldwork was enabled by the author’s Erasmus-based residency in both countries and was conducted in collaboration with Baltic social work researchers to ensure contextual grounding. Guided by Reflexive Thematic Analysis, Ecological Systems Theory, and the Planned Change process, patterns were identified across micro, meso, exo, and macro layers.

Results: Three themes emerged: (1) Defining and assessing the best interests of the child as a multidimensional, situational process; (2) decision authority and exosystem hierarchies that constrain social workers’ discretion; and (3) persistent policy–practice gaps driven by resource shortages, fragmented coordination, and cultural norms. Comparative analysis revealed Lithuania’s centralized, algorithmic approach promotes uniformity but limits flexibility, while Latvia’s family-centered model prioritizes preservation but relies heavily on Orphans’ Courts.

Conclusions: Assessment in child protection is a practice-in-context phenomenon shaped by systemic structures and cultural attitudes. To make UNCRC Articles 3 and 12 actionable, reforms should institutionalize child participation, strengthen multi-agency coordination, and align decision-making with assessment evidence. Workforce investment and community-level advocacy are critical to narrowing policy–practice gaps.

Artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled systems are increasingly governing access to youth services, yet empirical research remains limited on how young service users experience and evaluate AI-mediated service delivery. Based on procedural justice and institutional trust theory, the present research formulates and pilots a sequential institutional framework between AI-enabled service experience (AISE), algorithmic legitimacy (ALG), trust in AI-supported service systems (TIA), psychological well-being (PWB), and service satisfaction (SS). The respondents included youth service users (N = 418) in Pakistan who stated that they had previously used AI-supported services in education, health, and social welfare or community-based situations. To test the hypothesized relationships, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used and supplemented by importance-performance map analysis to examine the allocation of explanatory influence throughout the sequential model. TIA emerged as the most proximal and influential predictor of both PWB and SS, while ALG operated as a critical upstream mechanism shaping trust. Sequential mediation analyses further show that youth outcomes are influenced less by exposure to AI systems per se and more by evaluative judgments concerning the legitimacy and trustworthiness of AI-supported service processes. By centering youth service users and conceptualizing AI as an institutionalized component of service delivery, this study advances research on algorithmic governance in youth services and offers insights for ethically and accountably deploying AI-assisted systems to support positive youth outcomes.

Introduction

Youth unemployment and the growing number of young people classified as NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training) represent a major socio-economic challenge worldwide. In countries such as Morocco, this issue is particularly concerning due to persistent difficulties in the transition from education and training systems to the labour market. Although the employability of NEET youth has received increasing scholarly attention, the existing literature remains fragmented and unevenly distributed across research themes and geographical contexts. Consequently, a comprehensive understanding of research trends and gaps is still lacking. This study, therefore, addresses the following research question: What are the main trends, thematic orientations, and geographical gaps in the scientific literature on NEET youth employability and vocational training?

Methods

To answer this question, a bibliometric analysis was conducted using data retrieved from the Scopus database. The search strategy combined the keywords “NEET”, “employability”, and “vocational training”. The dataset was analysed using the Bibliometrix package in R to explore publication trends, influential journals and authors, international collaboration networks, and thematic structures.

Results

The results reveal a significant increase in publications over the past decade, with research primarily conducted in European contexts. Thematic analysis highlights key research areas related to youth labour market integration, skills development, social inclusion, and employment policies.

Conclusion

The study identifies important thematic and geographical gaps, emphasising the need for further research in developing regions such as North Africa.

In higher education, academic achievement is closely linked to learners’ cognitive engagement and their ability to process, organize, and retain complex disciplinary knowledge. This study examines the role of memory-based cognitive strategies in enhancing academic achievement among university students of heritage studies, a field whose curricula are inherently grounded in cumulative historical knowledge, cultural memory, and the interpretation of material and immaterial heritage.

Adopting a descriptive and analytical educational approach, the study draws on cognitive learning theory to explain how fundamental memory processes—such as encoding, organization, storage, and retrieval—support effective learning in heritage education. Given that heritage studies require students to connect historical contexts, cultural meanings, and symbolic representations across time, instructional strategies such as elaborative encoding, meaningful association, structured content organization, and retrieval practice are particularly relevant for fostering deep understanding.

The analysis demonstrates that teaching practices aligned with learners’ cognitive capacities play a significant role in improving comprehension and academic performance in heritage-related disciplines. Moreover, activating prior knowledge and encouraging reflective learning are shown to enhance students’ engagement with heritage curricula by facilitating the integration of new information into existing cognitive and cultural frameworks.

The findings highlight the pedagogical value of integrating memory-based cognitive strategies into heritage education curricula and teacher training programs, contributing to more effective, cognitively informed, and learner-centered approaches to teaching heritage studies in higher education.

Introduction:

Media plays a essential role in defining social affectation and clustered individuality in any society. In a doctrine and multi-religious state such as Pakistan, media representation of minority communities, especially religious minorities, is of momentous value. Accurate and fair representation of minorities, as well as communication of their rights and questioning, is testimony to social compatibility and inclusion. This study focuses on the role and representation of minorities in Pakistani electronic, print, and digital media, and examines the state of freedom and clearness of minority content within these media platforms.

Methods:

This research adopts a qualitative formulation based on a review of the existent academic literature, relative analysis of accessible media content, and interrogation of public views and people perceptions. Secondary data from previous research studies, media reports, and relevant materials were analyzed to measure existing process, structure, and clarity in the representation of minorities in Pakistan.

Results:

The aggregation shows that minority representation in Pakistani media is frequently limited and contradictory. While minorities are not totally absent from media communicative, their existence is often restricted, minimal, or subject to critical analysis. In many cases, minority sounds receive low attention, and their issues are not bestowed proportionately or comprehensively across different media platforms.

Conclusions:

This study concludes that there is a need for developed media pattern to guarantee fair, balanced, and exclusive representation of minority communities in Pakistan. It proposes applicable measures to code existent faults in media representation and emphasizes the value of orienting media policies and exercise with global modular. This paper also presents a theoretical account and methodology aimed at raising transparency, freedom, and relative representation of minorities in Pakistani media.

Understanding how people assess their subjective well-being (SWB) and health throughout their lives is important for evaluating their overall well-being and shaping social and health policy. Although SWB has been widely studied in Western Europe, research in Central and Eastern Europe remains less consistent and relatively limited. Existing studies often focus on individual countries, groups of countries, or specific population groups; there is a lack of comparative analyses examining how SWB and subjective health (SH) differ across age groups in neighbouring countries, such as Lithuania and Poland. The aim of this study is to analyse age-related differences in SWB and SH in Lithuania and Poland and to compare patterns between these two neighbouring countries using European Social Survey (ESS) data. The study uses data from the ESS according to selected survey rounds. SWB is measured according to respondents' self-reported happiness, and SH is assessed according to individuals' assessment of their general health. The analysis compares different age groups in order to identify trends in perceived well-being and health throughout life. In addition, the study examines possible changes over time. The study is based on a quantitative comparative research design, employing descriptive statistical methods and conducting a cross-national (Lithuania and Poland) and cross-age-group comparative analysis, while also assessing changes in the indicators under study over time. The results reveal clear differences in both SWB and SH, both when comparing age groups and countries. By examining the relationship between age, SWB and SH, this study contributes to the broader literature on well-being, aging, and subjective health in Central and Eastern Europe. Moreover, these results may also be important for policymakers seeking to improve the well-being and health indicators of different age groups.

Background and Purpose: Technology-Facilitated Intimate Partner Violence (TFIPV) represents a rapidly rising form of abuse in India, where digital platforms are weaponized to exert control, monitor, coerce, and sexually exploit individuals within intimate relationships. This study aims to empirically examine the socio-technical patterns of such abuse, investigate its psychological and social impacts on survivors, and explore rural–urban variations in experience and access to support.

Methods: Adopting a mixed-methods approach, the study analysed 231 survivor-generated social media posts and conducted semi-structured telephonic interviews with 48 survivors of TFIPV across diverse socio-demographic backgrounds. Data were subjected to thematic and comparative analysis to identify recurring patterns and contextual disparities.

Findings: The research reveals two emergent frameworks: the “Digital Abuse Cycle,” where abusers oscillate between public humiliation and private surveillance, and the “Digital Helplessness Spiral,” characterizing victims’ emotional erosion and social isolation. Rural survivors reported heightened vulnerabilities due to poor digital literacy and lack of legal awareness, while urban survivors faced reputational threats and professional sabotage.

Conclusions and Implications: TFIPV is deeply rooted in structural patriarchy and normalized digital control. The study proposes a TRUST Framework to inform professional practice, policy reform, and future interdisciplinary research aimed at addressing this under-recognized yet urgent form of violence.

The cultivation of young people who actively participate in global affairs is one of the most important goals within contemporary liberal democratic societies. In the Eastern context, existing discourse suggests that the presence of Asian values represents a unique challenge to the promotion of global citizenship. The values and qualities it promotes may stand in contrast to those required for global citizenship, such as obedience and harmony (in contrast to critical thinking and social change) and the primacy of the nation-state (in contrast to global orientation). This study examines what values and citizenship attributes are promoted in Social Studies in South Korea and Taiwan, two Asian-Confucian democracies that were formerly Japanese colonies and democratized in the late 1980s and 1990s. It seeks to understand (1) the extent to which globality, human rights, peace, and sustainability are promoted; (2) whether obligations are prioritized over rights; and (3) how these contents are framed or shaped by geopolitical contexts. This study employs discourse analysis of the latest national Social Studies curricula in Taiwan (2019) and South Korea (2022), comprising over 320,000 words, and integrates both quantitative and qualitative analytical methods. Social Studies was chosen based on its central role in fostering future citizens in both countries. The findings indicate that both curricula emphasize global citizenship values and do not privilege Asian Values. However, clear differences remain between the countries: the Taiwanese curriculum foregrounds “rights” more frequently, whereas the Korean curriculum places greater emphasis on “peace” and “democracy". Notably, while both curricula frequently mention “global”/“international”, the Taiwanese curriculum places greater emphasis on the “country” compared to Korea. This study contributes to the understanding of Asian values in contemporary contexts and in relation to global citizenship, and calls for further research on how geopolitics shape formal citizenship education in fostering young citizens.

Climate change presents serious challenges, especially in dry and semi-dry areas, and this is most severe in sub-Saharan Africa, where people are dependent on rain-fed agriculture. To address this issue, a new type of reinforcement learning (RL) mechanism that can be used to simulate and
optimize climate adaptation policies in Kitui County, Kenya, was developed. In this study, combined geospatial data encompassing several variables, such as precipitation, the health of vegetation, the number of people, and economic indicators, was used to create a custom reinforcement learning environment. A Deep Q-Network (DQN) agent was developed to distribute restricted financial resources amongst nine climate adaptation policies over a 25-year period simulation. The findings clearly show that the artificial intelligence agent targeted the long-term sustainability of the ecosystem. In connection to this, it made the choice of agroforestry in 76.0% of its decision cycles, and at the same time, it tactically bypassed high-capital, high-latency infrastructure such as dams and opted for distributed adaptive measures. This framework provides a powerful tool to support policymakers in a data-driven manner to analyze the interdependence of urgent aid and sustainable development. The study demonstrates the possibilities of using AI-powered decision support systems in the field of climate policy planning for the most affected areas.