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Existing studies have shown that a significant portion of women in mosques of the United States are dissatisfied with the way mosques are run. However, despite the rapidly growing number of purpose-built mosques in the US, little empirical research has investigated the impact of current spatial and physical features of these buildings on women. Using data from 422 blogposts and 13 semi-structured interviews with a diverse group of Muslim women, this study examines the psychological impact of common architectural characteristics of contemporary American mosques on women's sense of place. The study reveals that building affordances of accessibility, functional fit, and aesthetics in mosques enable a breadth of emotions and cognitive meanings that form women's sense of place. Findings suggest that care must be taken when designing new mosques to promote women's positive place experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article critically examines how design is used as a tool to establish a new brand of American Islamic spaces in situated contexts using four strategic mechanisms: (1) Using place as a means of institutionalizing the inclusive vision of the community; (2) Urbanizing the location by moving away from the suburbs, making it accessible to all; (3) Co-designing the space to foster ownership; (4) reflecting a new brand of space through contextually sensitive interiors. Findings suggest that these four community-based mechanisms were used to enact a vernacular brand of Islamic spaces in the US through communicating an inclusive hidden program of space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our global community necessitates the understanding of emergent hybrid typologies of religious spaces and their role in community development. Islamic third spaces are informal socio-religious environments that serve the unmet needs of acculturated generations of US Muslims. Using a place attachment framework, the study illustrates how the social and physical designs of two third spaces curate inclusive and contextually driven experiences for their members. This is done through an exploration of data from twenty-four in-depth semi-structured interviews with attendees of two Islamic third spaces. Findings indicated that, in addition to social and physical features of third spaces, contextual influences affecting US Muslims served a crucial role in participants place attachment. We conclude that attachment to third spaces provides a basis for community development processes, such as social cohesion and integration within the US populous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: During the last several decades, researchers have produced abundant evidence of the environmental impacts on stress, attention, and physical activity. More recently, scholars have turned their focus to the influence environments have on mental wellness. Therefore, a critical review of this more recent research is both timely and crucial for setting the future research agenda. Methods: In this article, we examined 65 papers published between 2008 and 2019 that examined the environmental correlates of a wide variety of mental health outcomes. We coded each study by type of environment, research design, mental health measurement scale used, and p -value. Results: We categorized the research studies into six groups based on mental health outcomes: emotions, moods, vitality, executive function, stress, and general well-being. Our review revealed several trends among the studies, including a heavy focus on nature and outdoor environments with little attention to workplace or residential environments; a lack of consensus on how to operationalize the environment; a heavy reliance on self-reported ratings using a wide variety of scales, many focused on the same outcome; and a disproportionate focus on short-term health effects. Conclusions: There is a need for greater consensus on research constructs and health outcome measurements, focused on a wider variety of environmental settings and scales, in order to better inform evidence-based environmental design practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children with developmental disabilities have different feeding and swallowing problems. The purposes of the present study were to develop an Arabic version of the FHI-C and to evaluate its validity, consistency, and reliability in Arabic children with developmental disabilities for assessing how feeding and swallowing problems impair the physical, functional, and emotional aspects of children’s lives. A prospective study including 113 children [62 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), 24 with cerebral palsy (CP), 27 with intellectual disability (ID)], in the age range of 2 to 10 years, selected randomly from the swallowing clinic, phoniatrics unit, Otorhinolaryngology department, University hospital between September 2023 and December 2023 complaining of feeding and swallowing problems. Validity was established by comparing patients` scores to typically developed controls (31 children). For test–retest reliability, forty parents filled out the A-FHI-C again two weeks after their initial visit. Cronbach’s alpha for A-FHI-C was 0.986, indicating good internal consistency. Intraclass correlation showed 0.850 with a 95% confidence interval from 0.779 to 0.898. All three clinical groups had significantly higher total FHI-C and FHI-C domain scores than the control group, indicating good validation. A-FHI-C was found to have significantly high test–retest reliability. The current study indicates that in children with ASD, CP, ID, feeding problems are more prevalent than children who are typically developed. The scores obtained can be used by phoniatricans to evaluate feeding problems and monitor the progress of the therapy plan in children with developmental disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]