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Article History

Received: 3 March 2025

Accepted: 21 May 2026

First Online: 1 June 2026

Competing interests

: The authors declare no competing interests.

: The research protocol was reviewed and approved by the Departmental Research Committee of Department of Psychology, University of Kashmir, Jammu & Kashmir, India (Approval No.: ET/EX-SCB-01, Dated:05-06-2023). The investigators were permitted to proceed with data collection as described in the proposal, without any requirement for further referral to the Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC) for this specific study, because the study poses no risk to participants as it involves a non-invasive, anonymous survey using a standardized and validated scale with no sensitive or traumatic questions. The target population consists of adult university students capable of providing informed consent, and no vulnerable groups are included. Therefore, this study qualified for exempt review and did not require further referral to the central IEC. Further, all procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration.

: Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Prior to data collection, participants were fully informed about the purpose of the research, the voluntary nature of their participation, the anonymity of their responses, and their right to withdraw at any time without consequence. No personally identifiable information was collected, and data were used solely for research purposes.