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Article History

Received: 12 February 2025

Accepted: 12 February 2026

First Online: 12 March 2026

Declarations

:

: This study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and complies with the Spanish Biomedical Research Act (Law 14/2007) [ ] and Organic Law 3/2018 on Data Protection (LOPDGDD) [ ]. In accordance with the 17th Additional Provision of Law 3/2018 [ ], the use of pseudonymized data for health research is permitted without additional explicit consent when a strict functional separation between the data controllers and the research team is guaranteed. Consequently, formal approval by a Research Ethics Committee (REC) was deemed unnecessary as the project falls outside the scope of Royal Decree 1090/2015 [ ]. The study is strictly observational, involves no clinical intervention, and the research team only had access to a dataset that was effectively anonymized at the source by the data collection agency. All participants provided explicit informed consent at the beginning of the questionnaire (via CATIor CAWI platforms). While the data collection agency managed personal identifiers for recruitment purposes, these were strictly decoupled from the responses. The final dataset delivered to the researchers was stripped of all personal identifiers, ensuring the confidentiality and privacy of participants in full compliance with current ethical and legal standards.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare no competing interests.