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This study aims to explore whether socio-economic factors determine the level of menstrual knowledge and perceptions of schoolgirls in Bangladesh. The aim of this study is to understand how knowledge and perceptions vary with variations in the different socio-economic factors in a schoolgirl’s life such as place of residence, religion, age, grade, parents’ education, parents’ occupation, family income and even family size.

Data were collected from four schools (two in urban areas and two in rural areas). A total of 450 schoolgirls from grades V–X were interviewed to examine how knowledge and perceptions varied with different socio-economic aspects. Multiple logistic regression models were used to measure the associations between various socio-economic variables and perceptions of and knowledge about menstruation.

Respondents from urban areas were 4.75 times more likely and those 14–16 years old were two times more likely to report higher levels of knowledge about menstruation compared to their counterparts. Based on the father’s occupation, respondents whose father was engaged in a professional occupation were 1.983 times more likely to have a higher level of knowledge on menstruation compared to those whose fathers were in an unskilled profession. Similarly, the odds of positive perceptions on menstruation were 1.456 and 1.987 times higher, respectively, among respondents living in urban areas and those 14–16 years old, compared to their counterparts.

This study provides evidence that different socio-economic and even demographic factors are important in the development of menstrual knowledge and perceptions. Policy formulation and development actions related to adolescent girls’ physical and reproductive health development need to consider these factors in Bangladesh and in other developing countries, where poor knowledge and perception related to menstruation are hindering girls’ mental and physical development. This is expected that better knowledge and perception will facilitate girls’ right to have better health and social lives.

The fund selection process of investors in a mutual fund needs to be understood for designing better marketing strategies. Knowledge and perception about the mutual funds can affect investor’s behaviour towards information search and selection criteria during the decision process. Therefore, this study aims to examine Indian mutual fund investors under the framework of Theory of Planned Behaviour and consumer’s behaviour model.

The data have been collected from mutual fund investors in the National Capital Region–Delhi, India, through structured questionnaire. The collected data were examined with relevant statistical tools.

Knowledge and perception affect information search behaviour of the investor. Investors having better knowledge of mutual funds access impersonal sources of information and performance of fund affects their choice, whereas investors having lesser knowledge of mutual fund take advice of experts and select funds based on fund characteristics. Investors with better return perception for mutual funds ignore performance as selection criteria, whereas investors having poor risk perception tend to reduce their bias by accessing personal sources of information. Education and income of investor affect knowledge and perception of mutual funds.

The financial advisor-driven investors ignore performance as selection criteria and could lead to dissatisfaction later. Therefore, to make the industry investor driven, mutual funds need to focus on improving the knowledge of investors.

This paper shows the unique effect of knowledge and perception on information search behaviour of investors towards mutual funds. The knowledgeable investor selects mutual funds by understanding all risks and benefits.

This study aims to validate the English version of a WHO-adapted questionnaire: Zika infection awareness/knowledge questionnaire using a unique dual-approach validation model.

A cross-sectional pilot study of 30 adult respondents in Malaysia completed the self-administered questionnaire on knowledge and perception to Zika infection. Construct validity was assessed by exploratory factor analysis (EFA) of SPSS and Rasch partial credit. Reliability is tested using pKR20 and Cronbach’s alpha.

Knowledge construct was unidimensional, good model fit, easy to endorse and well discriminative. Five-rating Likert scale for perception domain was appropriate. Knowledge domain should be separated into 6 level of difficulties. Perception domain should remain as one construct. Knowledge domain was highly reliability (pKR20 = 0.96), perception domain was fairly reliable (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.641). Respondent's ability to answer knowledge domain and perception domain were separated into 3 and 4 levels.

Small sample size may affect factor analysis.

The questionnaire has good psychometric properties to measure the knowledge and perception of Zika infection among Malaysian community.

The questionnaire helped to gauge knowledge and perception of the general community in Malaysia to aid preparation of health education tool for Zika infection.

This paper validated questionnaire with two biostatistical software programs in bidirectional approach – items difficulty and respondents' ability – is the first field test of WHO questionnaire among general population in Southeast Asia.

The purpose of this paper is to identify which plant protection practices consumers prefer and why. The authors focused on beneficial insects, genetically modified (GM) plants, synthetic chemical pesticides, biological plant protection, mechanical-physical plant protection as well as biotechnical plant protection. The authors studied the effects of the risk perception and both subjective and objective knowledge on preference.

The authors collected cross-sectional data from n = 1,223 people living in Germany. For this, the authors used an online panel and quoted participation after age, gender, income and region. The authors used multiple regression analyses and also explored moderation effects of knowledge on risk perception to explain participants' preferences.

The most preferred plant protection practice in the study sample was the application of beneficial insects. The authors found evidence that risk perception, as well as objective and subjective knowledge, can have a pivotal direct effect on preferences. Additionally, subjective as well as objective knowledge typically moderated the effect of risk perception, depending on the plant protection practice in focus. Overall, the authors found that levels of subjective and objective knowledge of plant protection practices were rather low among German participants.

While studies on consumer preferences for GM or organic food are abundant, preferences regarding other types of common plant protection practices are hardly investigated. To tackle this research gap, the authors focused on six different and common plant protection practices and compare results.

Environmental behavior studies suggest that knowledge, in addition to other psychological and social factors, can play an important role in consumers’ environmental behavior change. The purpose of this paper is to understand the relationship between knowledge and various psychological factors which encourage consumers’ participation in pro-environmental behaviors. The relationships that link an individual’s attitudes toward science, environmental values, different types of knowledge (i.e. scientific facts, environmental facts, and subjective environmental knowledge), environmental risk perception, and willingness to pay (WTP) for the environment with pro-environmental behavior were examined.

Theoretically guided hypotheses and model were formulated and tested with multiple linear regression models. The study was based on measures and data obtained from the large-sample secondary database of the 2010 General Social Survey (n=2,044).

Results indicated that while attitudes toward science had direct effects on knowledge of scientific facts and knowledge of environmental facts, environmental values showed effects on knowledge of environmental facts and subjective knowledge on environmental issues. The results also indicated that from different types of knowledge, subjective knowledge on environmental issues had effects on both environmental risk perception and WTP for the environment. Knowledge on environmental facts, on the other hand, was able to predict only environmental risk perception. The scientific factual knowledge did not show an effect on mediator of pro-environmental behavior. Also, subjective knowledge indicated indirect effects on pro-environmental behavior through environmental risk perception and WTP for the environment.

Although research on understanding factors influencing pro-environmental behaviors and potential relations to individual knowledge has grown in recent years, there has been very little attempt at distinguishing between different types of knowledge and investigating their potential roles in the context of environmentally relevant behaviors. This study will help understand the functioning of different types of consumer environmental knowledge and their impacts on pro-environmental behaviors more in depth.

Knowledge sharing is believed to enhance creativity; however, the purpose of this study is to find out how and when knowledge hiding perception of target affects creativity of IT professionals.

Using a temporally segregated survey based data from IT professionals, this study investigates a three-way interplay of knowledge hiding, supervisor support for creativity and creative self-efficacy to examine employee’s creativity. Time lagged data were collected from 253 respondents working in IT-based organizations across Pakistan.

Findings provide interesting insights revealing that knowledge hiding perception of target enhances target’s creativity through the mechanism of benign envy. Another appealing finding is that the three-way interaction effect of supervisor support and creative self-efficacy is found to weaken the effect of knowledge hiding perception on employee creativity.

This is first of its kind study which is specifically related target’s knowledge hiding perception with their own creativity among IT professionals. This study further explores the mechanism of benign envy as a motivational drive through which target’s knowledge hiding perception enhances creativity. The cumulative role of conditional factors that affect knowledge hiding perception to creativity link from target’s perspective has also been clarified. Most of the studies focus on benefits of knowledge sharing and ignoring the outcomes of knowledge hiding.

This study investigated whether organizational factors such as employees’ perceptions of management’s support for knowledge sharing, their perceptions of the organization’s social interaction culture, the organization’s size, and the organization’s available knowledge sharing technology, as well as whether individual factors such as age, gender, and organizational tenure had a significant impact on employees’ perceptions of a knowledge sharing culture. New measures to assess employees’ perceptions of management’s support for knowledge sharing, their perceptions of the organization’s social interaction culture, and the perceived knowledge sharing culture were developed. We found that perceptions of management’s support for knowledge sharing, and perceptions of a positive social interaction culture were both significant predictors of a perceived knowledge sharing culture. In addition, gender was a significant moderator: female participants required a more positive social interaction culture before they would perceive a knowledge sharing culture as positive as that perceived by their male counterparts.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the perception and knowledge of standard food/meal portion size and related factors in young adults.

The present study was conducted on 1,000 volunteer young adults, consisting of 504 men and 496 women (18 and 28 years). The portion size of food/meal, amount of food measuring utensils and also nutritional knowledge were evaluated via a questionnaire and some visual materials.

Knowledge of portion sizes, amount of food each utensil holds and nutrition was evaluated via a questionnaire and some visual materials. Knowledge of portion size with respect to food groups (p = 0.015), meals (p < 0.001) and food measuring utensils (p = 0.002) and nutritional knowledge scores (p = 0.011) differed based on body mass indexes (BMI). Women had on mean a higher nutritional knowledge score than men (2.0 ± 1.3, 1.9 ± 1.1 points, respectively). The probability of having knowledge about food measuring utensils was 1.4-fold greater for individuals who had been previously educated about nutrition (p = 0.034). Individuals of the faculty of health sciences had higher mean scores for all portion scores (p < 0.05).

The study findings highlighted that portion knowledge and perception of young adults were affected by gender, BMI, enrolled faculty and nutritional knowledge status. This is the first study, through which the portion knowledge and perception subcomponents (food, meal and measuring utensils) are evaluated, indicating each subcomponent to be affected by distinct factors.

The aim of this study is to examine the perceptions of consumers on Islamic banking and finance in Pakistan. Islamic finance is an emerging phenomenon, and its survival depends on the availability, affordability and awareness. This paper attempts to fill the gap in the literature by exploring the perceptions of consumers and bankers in an attempt to gain insights so that the availability of products and awareness can be increased.

The study uses a regression model by using perception as a dependent variable and awareness, knowledge and religious motivation as independent variables. Primary data is collected using 150 questionnaires distributed amongst finance students in several universities and employees of Islamic banks in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) Province of Pakistan.

The findings reveal that overall consumers’ perception is positive about Islamic banking and finance in Pakistan. Statistical analysis shows that awareness, knowledge and religiosity level have a positive influence on the perception of consumers about Islamic financing products and services in Pakistan. To improve the awareness and understanding, Islamic banks could make better marketing strategies and could increase their presence by mosque visits and conferences. Cooperation between the industry and scholars could help in providing more innovative products to the consumers.

There has been a limited amount of work carried out on the perceptions of consumers about Islamic banking in Pakistan. The present study represents the start of a larger context for examining Islamic banking practices in Pakistan. The findings of the study can be used as a reference in future research projects in the areas of perceptions and awareness.

Little research has been conducted to study this problem from the perspectives of consumers and Islamic banking employees. Most of the research associated with Islamic banks fails to pay attention to these stakeholder groups in one study.