Document is current

Article History

Received: 22 July 2024

Accepted: 20 January 2026

First Online: 29 January 2026

Competing interests

: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

: All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of Qingdao University of Science and Technology (Date: 5 June 2020 / No. 20200605001), including specific endorsement for the involvement of minors. It covered the full scope of the study, including all procedures involving human participants, data collection methods, informed consent processes, and data storage and protection protocols. The questionnaire and methodology for this study were approved as part of the above protocol. Participants were adolescents aged 11–13 years; informed consent was obtained online from both parents/legal guardians and adolescents prior to data collection.

: Data collection in November 2022 at a secondary school in North China. Written informed consent and assent of the adolescents and themselves were obtained electronically between 10 and 11 November 2022. Homeroom teachers distributed the survey link to parents/guardians via the class WeChat group; parents opened the link, read the one-page information sheet, and clicking “I agree.” Immediately afterwards, the same link presented an age-appropriate assent page to the adolescents, who likewise clicked “I agree” before proceeding. If parents agreed to allow their children to participate and the adolescents themselves also assented, the survey was unlocked for completion; if either parents declined or adolescents did not assent, the student was excluded. The consent/assent covered voluntary participation, the right to withdraw at any time without consequence, anonymity, the academic purpose of the research, the aggregated and anonymised use of data for publications, the 20-minute completion time, the absence of any effect on academic grades, and the lack of foreseeable risks beyond minor inconvenience. Participants were pupils aged 11–13 years (minors); the study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Qingdao University of Science and Technology (Date: 5 June 2020 / No. 20200605001) and all procedures were performed in accordance with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments.