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Article History

Received: 4 November 2024

Accepted: 10 June 2025

First Online: 1 July 2025

Competing interests

: The authors declare no competing interests.

: All procedures involving human participants in this study adhered to the ethical standards of the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board Ethics Committee of West Texas A&M University (Ethics approval #2021.02.011) on March 5, 2021 through Expedited Review. Upon approval, this research study was performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines/regulations of the West Texas A&M University Institutional Review Board Ethics Committee, and involved no foreseeable risks, as survey data was collected in such a way that participants could not be identified by their responses. The survey implemented in this research did not collect any traceable data, or data that would personally identify participants.

: All participants included in this study provided their virtual written informed consent form via the survey platform Qualtrics using a required consent prompt prior to commencing the survey. The prompt included the entire informed consent form which covered the purpose of the study, the inclusion criteria (being at least 18 years of age or older and an undergraduate student), that there would be no foreseeable risks in their participation, and that their data confidentiality would be protected through anonymity, and their participation in the study was voluntary. All subjects were required to read the information and indicate that they that they understood that their responses would be used for research, no compensation was being provided for participation, their responses would remain anonymous and could not be traced, that they may stop the survey at any time or may choose not to answer any questions if they felt uncomfortable, data would be collected and stored by the authors without risk, and their grade in any class would not be affected by their lack of participation. Participants were required to confirm their consent before they were allowed to continue the survey. Subjects who consented to participate were directed to the survey on a subsequent page, and those who did not consent were thanked for their time and the survey was closed on the next page. Only data collected for those participants who consented was included within this study. Participants completed the survey between mid-March and April 2021 and participants were fully informed of the protection of their anonymity and confidentiality in their survey responses (with no personally identifiable information collected due to the survey continuing on a separate page) and no foreseen risks involved in their participation. This study did not include any vulnerable populations or minors under 18 and did not use any interventions. Participants also had the right to withdraw at any point in the study without any consequences and were informed that the research data collected would be published in a journal and used for academic purposes.