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Article History

Received: 26 August 2024

Accepted: 19 May 2025

First Online: 26 May 2025

Competing interests

: The authors declare no competing interests.

: This study was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of the School of Teacher Education, Huzhou University (Approval No. 20231207_XL01) on December 7, 2023. All procedures involving human participants were conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The scope of the approval covered the recruitment, informed consent, data collection, and analysis of junior high school students in Anhui Province, China. The research posed minimal risk to participants and involved the administration of self-report questionnaires only.

: Written informed consent was obtained from all participants and their legal guardians prior to the study. The consent process was conducted on-site by trained research assistants between March 1 and April 15, 2024, during regular school hours. Participants and their guardians received a detailed information sheet outlining the purpose of the study, the procedures involved, potential risks and benefits, and their rights, including the right to withdraw from the study at any time without penalty. Consent covered participation in the study, the use of data for academic research purposes, and the publication of anonymized results. Participants were assured that their responses would remain confidential and be reported only in aggregate form.