Search results

The purpose of this study was to assess the knowledge of head and neck cancers (HNCs), their risk factors, signs and symptoms among the general public of Karachi, Pakistan.

Initially, 503 individuals were approached for data collection, out of which 404 fit the inclusion criteria (response rate = 80.03%). Nonprobability convenience sampling was utilized to select participants who fell under the age group of 15–60 years, barring the fields of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelors of Surgery (MBBS) and Bachelors of Dentistry (BDS). Knowledge was evaluated by a 9-item questionnaire, the scores of which yielded the following interpretations: No (0), low (1–3), moderate (4–6) and high (7–9) knowledge.

Of the 404 participants who completed the questionnaire, 357 (88.4%) participants claimed to be aware of HNC. The HNC knowledge scores had a statistical relevance with socioeconomic status (p = <0.01) and level of education (p = 0.02). Most participants recognized a “lump or swelling in the throat” (87.1%) as the most common symptom, followed by “bleeding in mouth or throat” (84.7%). Surprisingly, 75.25% of participants thought HNCs were inclusive of brain cancer.

Overall, knowledge of HNCs among the general public of Karachi surpasses the knowledge in other regions around the world. Our study demonstrated that people indulge in unhealthy habits despite having sufficient knowledge and this warrants prompt interventions and counseling of the people.

This paper aims to examine the effects of CO₂ emissions, energy consumption, cultivated area and the labour force on the production of cereal crops in Pakistan from the period 1971-2014.

The study used the Johansen cointegration test, the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach and Granger causality test to estimate the long-run cointegration and direction of the relationship between the dependent and independent variables.

The outcomes of the Johansen cointegration test confirmed the existence of a long-term cointegrating relationship between the production of cereal crops, CO₂ emissions, energy consumption, cultivated area and the labour force. The results of the long-run coefficients of CO₂ emissions, energy consumption, cultivated area and labour force have a positive impact on cereal crops production. The long-run relationships reveal that a 1 per cent increase in CO₂ emissions, energy consumption, cultivated area and labour force will increase cereal crops production by 0.20, 0.11, 0.56 and 0.74 per cent, respectively. Moreover, the findings show that there is a bidirectional causality running from CO₂ emissions and cultivated area to cereal crops production. Moreover, there is a unidirectional causality running from energy consumption to cereal crops production.

The present study also fills the literature gap for applying the ARDL procedure to examine this relevant issue for Pakistan.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of human resource management and employee job satisfaction in predicting organizational commitment in the Saudi Arabian banking sector.

For the purpose of this study, quantitative survey research was employed. The independent variables are human resource management and employee job satisfaction, while the dependent variable is organizational commitment.

Human resource management correlated positively with employee job satisfaction and organizational commitment. On the other hand, employee job satisfaction was found to be positively correlated with organizational commitment. The two independent variables made significant individual contributions to the prediction of organizational commitment.

This study has some limitations. First, convenient sampling method was used to recruit the participants. Therefore, the findings of the study have limited generalizability in other regions and age groups. Second, as a cross-sectional study, there has to be caution in making any generalization of the results. Future researchers should get more respondents from wider geographical location, that is from different bans, private and public. Furthermore, self-report questionnaires were used to collect data from respondents. It is recommended that future researchers use different methods such as personal interview or telephone interview to collect data. This may help get reliable data after clarifying and removing what may be ambiguous.

The results of this study have corroborated with previous research and confirmed correlations between and among human resource management (HRM), employee job satisfaction and organizational commitment in the Saudi Arabian banking sector. These findings have practical implications. Having high levels of job satisfaction among bank employees will prevent low levels of turnover rate, absenteeism and levels of productivity and increase organizational commitment. HRM practices, on the other hand, help in career development opportunities and hence provide better job opportunities. This study can recommend that to ensure high levels of job satisfaction among employees and enhanced organizational commitment, organizations, especially banks, should emphasize more on HRM practices.

This study could contribute to the literature on HRM, job satisfaction and organizational commitment in the Saudi Arabian banking sector. There is a rapid growth in the banking sector in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, there is an urge for recruiting efficient and experienced human resources (Mizan et al., 2013). This study will contribute to the development of the Saudi Arabian banking sector, which may lead to maintain this sector work effectively that will have a positively impact on the economy of the Saudi society. It also will highlight the nature and importance of the HRM practices for the benefit of the banking sector.

Foodbank use in the UK is rising but, despite high levels of poverty, Pakistani women are less likely to use food banks than white British women. The purpose of this paper is to understand the lived experience of food in the context of poverty amongst Pakistani and white British women in Bradford, including perspectives on food aid.

A total of 16 Pakistani and white British women, recruited through community initiatives, participated in three focus groups (one interview was also held as a consequence of recruitment difficulties). Each group met for two hours aided by a moderator and professional interpreter. The transcripts were analysed thematically using a three-stage process.

Women in low-income households employed dual strategies to reconcile caring responsibilities and financial obligations: the first sought to make ends meet within household income; the second looked to outside sources of support. There was a reported near absence of food insecurity amongst Pakistani women which could be attributed to support from social/familial networks, resource management within the household, and cultural and religious frameworks. A minority of participants and no Pakistani respondents accessed charitable food aid. There were three reasons for the non-use of food aid: it was not required because of resource management strategies within the household and assistance from familial/social networks; it was avoided out of shame; and knowledge about its existence was poor.

This case study is the first examination of varying experiences of food insecurity amongst UK white British and Pakistani women. Whilst the sample size is small, it presents new evidence on perceptions of food insecurity amongst Pakistani households and on why households of varying ethnicities do not use food aid.

Halal and Islamic tourism is gaining attention in the tourism literature in recent years. This study uses bibliometric analytical techniques to explore all the publications indexed in the Scopus database in the broad subject of Halal and Islamic tourism from 2004 to 2021.

The authors found 238 publications that fit the function, subject and set criteria. The papers were analysed in terms of publication by knowledge area, number of studies published every year, contribution by countries, number of authors and most influential journals. VOS viewer was used to perform a visual analysis on co-occurrence of keywords and document citations.

According to the findings, the Scopus database includes 151 (34.40%) documents on business, management and accounting, and 89 (20.27%) documents on social science. It was reported that 29 documents were published in 2018, followed by 54 documents in 2019 and 56 documents in 2021. Malaysia has contributed 86 documents on Islamic tourism, whereas Indonesia has contributed 64 documents. The paper also discusses other interesting findings.

The bibliometric analysis carried out was confined to Scopus data. Other national and international databases were not taken into account for this research.

Between 2004 and 2021, this study examined relevant studies on Halal and Islamic tourism. The study presents a concise review of the literature accessible to researchers working in this area and provides recommendations for future research.