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Introduction: Although Jordan has made significant progress toward expanding the utilization of facility‐based intrapartum care, prior research highlights that poor service quality is still persistent. This study aimed to identify quality gaps between women's expectations and perceptions of the actual intrapartum care received, while exploring the contributing factors. Methods: Utilizing a pre–post design, quality gaps in intrapartum care were assessed among 959 women pre‐ and postchildbirth at a prominent tertiary hospital in northern Jordan. Data were gathered using the SERVQUAL scale, measuring service quality across reliability, responsiveness, tangibles, assurance, and empathy dimensions. Results: The overall mean gap score between women's expectations and perceptions of the quality of intrapartum care was −0.60 (±0.56). The lowest and highest mean gap scores were found to be related to tangibles and assurance dimensions, −0.24 (±0.39) and −0.88 (±0.35), respectively. Significant negative quality gaps were identified in the dimensions of assurance, empathy, and responsiveness, as well as overall service quality (p < 0.001). The MLR analyses highlighted education (β = 0.61), mode of birth (β = −0.60), admission timing (β = −0.41), continuity of midwifery care (β = −0.43), physician's gender (β = −0.62), active labour duration (β = 0.37), and pain management (β = −0.33) to be the key determinants of the overall quality gap in intrapartum care. Conclusion: Our findings underscore the importance of fostering a labour environment that prioritizes enhancing caregivers' empathetic, reassuring, and responsive skills to minimize service quality gaps and enhance the overall childbirth experience for women in Jordan. Patient or Public Contribution: This paper is a collaborative effort involving women with lived experiences of childbirth, midwives, and obstetrics and gynaecologist physicians. The original idea, conceptualization, data generation, and coproduction, including manuscript editing, were shaped by the valuable contributions of stakeholders with unique perspectives on intrapartum care in Jordan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The whole of society has been passing through difficult times due to the effects of COVID‐19. Such a lengthy period has greatly impacted lifestyles and living standards. Accordingly, this paper aimed to examine the role of Jordanian children in purchasing decision‐making within the framework of parental mediation during COVID‐19. A quantitative methodology was applied, and a questionnaire targeted 287 children aged 8–12. Findings demonstrated a correlation between the influence of COVID‐19. They changed the purchasing behaviour of children, as their daily habits have changed to increased periods of stay at home, leading to a long preoccupation with watching the Internet/commercials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By a classical theorem of Jordan, every faithful transitive action of a non‐trivial finite group has a derangement (an element with no fixed points). The existence of derangements with additional properties has attracted much attention, especially for faithful primitive actions of almost simple groups. In this paper, we show that an almost simple group can have an element that is a derangement in every faithful primitive action, and we call these elements totally deranged. In fact, we classify the totally deranged elements of all almost simple groups, showing that an almost simple group G$G$ contains a totally deranged element only if the socle of G$G$ is Sp4(2f)$\mathrm{Sp}_4(2^f)$ or PΩn+(q)$\mathrm{P}\Omega ^+_n(q)$ with n=2l⩾8$n=2^l \geqslant 8$. Using this, we classify the invariable generating sets of a finite simple group G$G$ of the form {x,xa}$\lbrace x, x^a \rbrace$ where x∈G$x \in G$ and a∈Aut(G)$a \in \mathrm{Aut}(G)$, answering a question of Garzoni. As a final application, we classify the elements of almost simple groups that are contained in a unique maximal subgroup H$H$ in the case where H$H$ is not core‐free, which complements the recent work of Guralnick and Tracey addressing the case where H$H$ is core‐free. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Early diagnosis of health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and stress, which have been recognized as global health issues, is essential for providing psychological support to people who experience negative emotions. Therefore, it is important to identify a reliable method for diagnosing depression, anxiety, and stress. To this end, this study investigated the factor structure and evaluated the psychometric properties of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale‐21 (DASS‐21) in Jordan. Methods: A university sample of 336 Jordanians completed the Arabic version of the DASS‐21 and several psychopathology measures. Cross‐sectional study and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were applied to achieve the study's aims. Results: CFA favored the bifactor model compared to the other four models. In contrast, the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) and the Beck Depression Inventory‐II (BDI‐II) strongly correlated with the DASS‐21, indicating that the DASS‐21 has adequate convergent and divergent validity. Subsequently, the scale's discriminant validity was tested using the heterotrait–monotrait (HTMT) correlation ratio, which was found to be relatively insufficient. While DASS‐21 showed strong reliability, Cronbach's α and McDonald's omega values ranged between 0.83 and 0.93. Conclusion: The bifactor model best fits the Jordanian sample data. The DASS‐21 has optimum psychometric properties; therefore, it can be used to assess the general distress experienced by the Jordanian community during research investigations and in non‐clinical settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality complementary feeding (CF) of infants and young children is key to their growth and development. But in Jordan, providing appropriate CF remains a challenge. This study assesses trends in infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices, and consumption by infants and young children aged 6–23 months of breast milk substitutes (BMSs), sugar‐sweetened beverages (SSBs), and micronutrient‐rich foods in Jordan from 1990 to 2017. We combined dietary data on infants and young children from six Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) (n = 14,880 children) to compute IYCF indicators. The latter included minimum dietary diversity (MDD), minimum meal frequency (MMF), and minimum acceptable diet (MAD), as well as intake of micronutrient‐rich foods and food groups, specific SSBs, and infant formula. We conducted trend analyses using logistic regression models adjusted for child's age in month, child age squared, governorates, urban/rural residence, mother's educational attainment, and household wealth quintiles. We found that the proportion of consumption of micronutrient‐rich food groups declined significantly between 1990 and 2017, with fewer infants and young children consuming eggs (OR = 0.39, p ≤ 0.001, 2002 reference), meat, poultry, and fish (OR = 0.25, p ≤ 0.001, 2002 reference), dairy (OR = 0.59, p ≤ 0.001, 2002 reference) and Vitamin A‐rich fruits and vegetables (OR = 0.66, p ≤ 0.001, 2002 reference). Conversely, there was increased use of BMSs and sugar‐sweetened juices that paralleled a decline in the share of infants and young children meeting appropriate CF practices and consuming micronutrient‐rich foods and food groups. By 2017, children aged 6–23 months were significantly less likely to meet MDD, MMF, and subsequently MAD; the odds of consuming BMSs were almost three times the reference (OR = 3.8, p ≤ 0.001, 1990 reference), as were the odds of consuming sugar sweetened juices (OR = 3.63, p ≤ 0.001, 1990 reference). Food insecurity and undernutrition are low in Jordan; however, overweight and obesity rates are increasing concurrently as are micronutrient deficiencies. This highlights the need for policymakers to address factors at individual and household levels (behaviours and practices) as well as environmental issues (increasing access to unhealthy and ultraprocessed foods). Key messages: In 2017, Jordanian infants and young children were significantly less likely to meet minimum dietary diversity (MDD), minimum meal frequency (MMF), and minimum acceptable diet (MAD) than in 1990.At the same time, the odds of consuming infant formula were six times higher in 2017, while consuming any breast milk substitute was four time higher (infant formula and/or animal milk).The proportion of infants and young children consuming micronutrient‐rich food groups has declined in Jordan over time, with fewer infants and young children reporting consuming animal‐source foods as well as Vitamin A‐rich fruits and vegetables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research aims to examine the influences of board gender composition on debt costs and its significance to Jordanian creditors: mainly banks, using agency and resource dependence theories. A sample of 113 non‐financial Jordanian firms listed on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) from 2010 to 2019 was utilised to explore the impact of board gender on the cost of debt financing through panel regression analysis. To tackle endogeneity concerns, we employ a two‐step system generalised method of moments estimator. The findings discovered that more female directors on firm boards generated economic benefits for non‐financial sectors, which achieved an average 0.75% cut‐off interest rate incurred by lenders compared to the counterparts with fewer female directors. Our findings are still robust to endogeneity concerns. The findings offered valuable insights for academics, shareholders, firms, and regulators. Shareholders are required to provide more pressure on firms to enhance gender equality. Firms should adjust board gender composition via the inclusion of more female directors while regulators should develop guidelines, such as a minimum female quota in promoting more females to the board. The finding generalisability is limited to developing markets with similar settings. This study bridged a vital gap in the governance literature on the nexus between board gender composition and debt costs in Jordanian contexts where no minimum gender quota exists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge‐oriented leadership phenomenon has captured the interest of scholars and industry leaders given its positive impact on sustainable organizational and employees outcomes. By drawing on affective event theory, this research explores the role of knowledge‐oriented leadership on knowledge‐centered culture, service innovative behavior and employees' job satisfaction and the mediating role of knowledge‐centered culture. The proposed model and hypotheses were tested using survey data gathered from 456 hotels and travel agencies employees in Jordan. The analysis was conducted using the contemporary structural equation modeling modus operandi, the partial least squares. The findings confirm that knowledge‐oriented leadership promotes knowledge‐centered culture in organizations, which in turn, promotes employees' job satisfaction and service innovative behavior. Knowledge‐centered culture concurrently mediates the path linking knowledge‐oriented leadership to job satisfaction and innovative behavior, respectively. The literature is devoid of scholarly work on the impact of knowledge‐oriented leadership and knowledge‐centered culture on employee outcomes in the tourism and hospitality industry context. This study being among the first to contribute to the literature from a developing country's perspective, prescribes empirical evidence, that knowledge‐oriented leadership promotes a knowledge‐centered culture in organizations, which subsequently leads to increased job satisfaction and service innovation. Furthermore, this study provides practical implications for organizations looking to promote a knowledge‐centered culture and enhance their employees' job satisfaction and service innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]