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This study aimed to identify which positive psychological factors are associated with the mental health of older adult retirees. Positive psychology is an emerging discipline of psychology. The study and identification of such factors could lead to increased mental health and lower stress levels of individuals (Ho et al., 2014; Abbas et al., 2019).

The authors searched the following electronic databases: Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus. Thematic synthesis was used for analysis. Database search resulted in the recruitment of 948 articles; after the screening process, only 7 articles were left for further analysis.

Thematic synthesis of resulting articles from systematic literature review revealed that “staying active after retirement, participation in social activities, volunteering, and presence of loved ones” are positive psychological factors that are positively associated with the mental health of older adult retirees. A few positive psychological factors and their association with the mental health of older adult retirees have been examined. Other positive psychological factors and their association with the mental health of older adult retirees are yet to be investigated in future research.

First, many studies have investigated meaning and purpose in life, relationships or having intimacy, well-being, transcendence, flow or engagement, spirituality and flourishing (pleasant life, engaged life and meaningful life, relationship and achievement) (LeBon, 2014). However, many other positive psychological constructs need to be studied yet in this age group examples include wisdom, courage, mindfulness, forgiveness, resilience, emotional intelligence, hope and humor. Second, there is need of theory in the field of successful aging with respect to the positive psychology. Third, which factors negatively contributed toward the mental health of older adult could be another area of future systematic literature review. Finally, role of culture needs to be examined with reference to which positive psychological factor could be important in a specific given cultural context.

The findings of the current research will be useful for clinical psychologist, counselors and gerontologists to understand which factors positively contributed toward the mental health of older adult retirees, which in turn will help to improve mental health of older adult retirees. Findings of the present study set grounds for future research in the field of gerontology in specific cultural context. The findings of this study have added to scientific body of existing literature. Better understanding of retirement can lead to increase in use of positive intervention-based programs for retirees that can facilitate them with life after retirement.

Policymaker working on the well-being of older adult retirees can take help from this study’s evidence-based findings for developing any policy.

Systematic literature review consolidated the existing literature review on the present topic of research. This systematic literature review highlighted factors that are associated with the enhanced mental health of older adults’ retirees. Furthermore, findings revealed the important gap in literature that is many positive psychological constructs are need to be studied yet in this age group examples includes wisdom, courage, mindfulness, forgiveness, resilience, emotional intelligence, hope and humor. Hence, this study has implications for future research.

The active and intentional involvement of a person in changing and developing as a person is a crucial and worth considering phenomenon that comes under the umbrella of positive psychology. There has been a previous study done on personal growth initiative (PGI) but that study did not explain whether this phenomenon exceeds in men or in women. Plus, previous studies were confined to college students only. This study aims to assess how gender influences PGI, to validate the psychometric properties of the PGI scale and to evaluate the relationship of PGI with mental well-being, career orientation and to examine whether this factor dominates in men or women and to critically validate at what age an individual starts initiating personal growth. The other main objective of the study is to work on the limitations and gaps left in previous studies on PGI by establishing a psychometrically reliable and valid scale/instrument.

To develop a scale, first, focus group discussions were conducted with six groups. Through random sampling, a sample of 50 men and 50 women were taken for the pilot study and N = 449 (156 men and 293 women) for the main study with ages ranging from 18 to 35 years were taken (M = 42.30, SD = 12.61). The study consisted of focus group discussions followed by thematic analysis and item pool generation which further followed the main study analysis. For the development of the scale, a theoretical basis along with focus group discussion was conducted to establish an item pool of 123 items. Afterward, 7 experts in the surroundings examined those 123 items to perform subject expert matter to establish content validity. Mixed method was used as a research method in which exploratory sequential design was used. Focus groups were used as a data collection technique. Random sampling is used to collect participants for study/methodology/approach – the study consisted of focus group discussions followed by thematic analysis and item pool generation which further followed the main study analysis. A 19 item five-point Likert-type scale is constructed for public administration on a sample of N = 449 (men = 156 and women = 293). Alpha reliability of the scale (0.83), Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) (0.88) and Bartlett’s, psychometric properties of study variables skewness (0.47), kurtosis (−0.17). Inter item correlation matrix, item-total correlation, Scree plotting, t-test (t = −1.90) and (p = 0.05) and linear regression analysis are analyzed on the data and items. This scale is kept parsimonious so that it could be understood by the general population as well.

A 19 item five-point Likert-type scale is constructed for public administration on a sample of N = 449 (men = 156 and women = 293). High Alpha reliability of the scale (a = 0.83), KMO (0.88) and Bartlett’s, psychometric properties of study variables skewness (0.47), kurtosis (−0.17). Inter item correlation matrix, Scree plotting, t-test (t = −1.90) and (p = 0.05) and linear regression analysis are analyzed on the data and items. Three factors i.e. effectiveness, shaping and aptitude were formed through exploratory factor analysis (EFA). KMO value of 0.88 suggests that the sample is sufficient to perform EFA. Regression analysis suggests that gender is positively predicting PGI as results are statistically.

Some of the limitations of this scale on which the future researchers can work are that the sample included participants above age 18 only, so for future researchers they could include participants below this age and find out the PGI factor in them. The sample also included mostly unmarried individuals so for future applications they can find out the extent to which being married can affect the PGI factor, as compared to being unmarried. Another thing that should be mentioned is that the main objective was to find out whether PGI differs among men and women and as the results show that it does differ on the basis of gender but for future studies, the researchers could work on if there is also a difference in men and women in the three subscales (formed during EFA).

This scale is developed using a significant element of human personality called personal growth which is applicable to various categories and settings of the society to measure the aptitude and inclination toward PGI. This scale can be eligibly administered for research purposes for measuring the growth attitude as a reliable predictor in suitable combination with other expected variables like career development.

The findings suggest the instrument to be psychometrically valid and reliable and can be helpful in many domains such as industrial organizations, career counseling areas and clinical and research settings. Also, the instrument can be beneficial for future studies in identifying other possible relationships with multiple variables. The current study is an original work to assess the level of PGI in men and women as the previous studies did not include participants below 25 and also they did not assess the inclination of PGI comparably in men and women.

This study aims to explore the indigenous needs of married women in Pakistan due to the public health challenges they face due to marital conflict. The research focuses on investigating psychometric properties and cross-cultural validation of the revised dyadic adjustment scale’s (RDAS) Urdu translated version to assess marital relationship quality between married madrassa and non-madrassa women. The study examines empirically validated two-factor model (RDAS) between married madrassa and non-madrassa women (Busby et al., 1995; Hollist et al., 2012; Isanezhad et al., 2012; Christensen et al., 2006) and (Bayraktaroglu and Cakici, 2017). These studies approach including consensus, satisfaction and cohesion.

The investigators executed the study into two phases: a pilot test and the main survey.

The pilot study's findings specified that the Urdu translated version of the revised DAS indicated a decent internal consistency (a = 0.70). The overall revised DAS maintained a stronger test-retest correlation and tested it over 15 days (r = 0.95). The main study recorded 300 respondents' responses from madrassa and non-madrassa married women using a purposive sampling approach and recruited them from the locality of various madrassas and housing societies of Islamabad, Azad Kashmir and Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The study findings showed higher intercorrelations between total and subscales of the revised DAS. It further compared the groups with a multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) method and examined the revised DAS structure in married madrassa and non-madrassa women.

This study contributes to scientific knowledge and helps develop and validate indigenous cross-cultural instruments to examine marital life quality. It offers practical and reliable information about Pakistani couples' emotional attachment and marriage adjustment issues.

The study applied a three-factor solution, and it demonstrated a robust factorial validity in the context of Pakistani culture, which is a novel contribution to the literature.

The purpose of this study is to highlight key issues pertaining to making use of Islamic equity indices and proposing possible solutions to address the problems faced in advancement of the concept of Shariah investing (SI) with the aim to advance the discourse on the subject.

Online focus group discussion (FGD) was carried out in which ten Islamic finance researchers and analysts belonging to institutions considered as authority on the subject matter participated to share their viewpoints on Islamic equity indices. Content analysis on the collected data of FGD was carried out which has revealed six key themes.

Six broader themes were identified based on the analysis of FGD, which includes criteria for constructing Islamic equity indices, utilization of Islamic equity indices for comparison with conventional stock indices, stock market efficiency perspectives, reason for integration of different equity markets, investors’ awareness of SI and future directions of Islamic equity indices. Results of the study indicate that Islamic finance researchers and analysts opined that there is a need for revising the criteria for construction of Islamic equity indices. There are conflicting viewpoints regarding performance and efficiency of Islamic indices in comparison with conventional indices and main reasons for stock market integration are trade liberalization, globalization and other factors. Moreover, there is a need for making investors and other market players aware about the attractiveness of Islamic indices from investing point of view.

Based on this extensive literature review and as highlighted by Masih et al. (2018) in their recap of literature on Islamic equity indices indicating that there are bulk of empirical studies carried in the past in the domain, however, there is a dearth of theoretical and qualitative studies. Hence, this preliminary qualitative study not only makes theoretical contribution but also deploys FGD, which is rarely used in the similar context, and offers candid views of the participants on key issues pertaining to Islamic equity indices. This lends novelty to this study.

There is an ever-increasing number of patients suffering from various forms of acute and chronic pain and getting treatment for such ailments is a basic human right. Opioid analgesics remain one way of managing and attending to such patients. However, due to the prevalence of opiophobia, many doctors avoid prescribing opioid-based medicines, even at the cost of patients suffering leading to a hindrance in providing optimal health care. Up till now, there has been no reliable and valid instrument to measure the severity of opiophobia in doctors. For this reason, the purpose of this study is to represent the construction of a precise and reliable instrument for measuring opiophobia along with its validation for doctors in Pakistan.

Interviews and theoretical knowledge relating to opiophobia were used as the basis for the purpose of generating an item pool. The generated item pool was evaluated by subject matter experts for content validity and inter-rater reliability, followed by Velicer’s minimum average partial method and maximum likelihood factor analysis for establishing the factorial structure of the scale. As opiophobia in doctors prevails the most and causes a lower ratio of prescription of opioid analgesics. The present sample selected for the study was that of n = 100 doctors (men = 50; women = 50) from various hospitals, treating patients with chronic pain, in Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

A two-factor structure was suggested by Velicer’s minimum average partial method and maximum likelihood factor analysis, which were labeled as fear of opioid analgesics and justified acceptance of opioids. The developed opiophobia questionnaire along with its subscales displayed appropriate levels of reliability α = 0.733, α = 0.760 and α = 0.725, respectively, suggesting the scale to be reliable.

Like any other study, this study also tried to address every essential aspect, but still lacked at some places which should be considered and catered for in future studies. In the first place the sample size was very limited which was due to the fact, the study was conducted during a pandemic and physically going for data collection was unavailable, thus leading to consequent sample size. It is recommended a correspondent study can be conducted with larger sample size, so they can get more reliable results with greater precision and power. Then, they will have the advantage of a small margin of error. The second limitation was the study involved only doctors as that was the main focus of the present study. However, other hospital staff such as nurses should also be incorporated to assess their level of opiophobia. The current scale suggests the severity of opiophobia with higher scores though no cutoff point has been suggested. Future studies should try and incorporate a cutoff point to assess the difference between doctors who have conventional levels of reservations against opioids and those suffering from opiophobia. Another limitation was that the present scale did not establish additional validities such as convergent and divergent validity. Future studies should collect data from a larger sample to establish these validities to further refine the scale.

This instrument can be immensely effective in identifying doctors who have concerns and fears about prescribing opioids to patients with chronic pain. The findings acquired on such a scale can help in developing appropriate academic and psychological interventions which can help such doctors to overcome their opiophobia. This can enable more doctors to prescribe appropriate medicine to their patients instead of letting them suffer from pain. Additionally, researchers can equally benefit from the instrument as it can enable them to investigate opiophobia with other possible variables.

Developing such a scale about the fear faced by doctors while treating patients would be very useful as it is not possible to take such fear when it comes to a patient’s life. This fear is also common among patients where they have a fear about the undesirable effects, addiction of drugs and fear of dying. Better awareness should be given to them which will be helpful for successful and less painful treatment in hospitals.

This scale is an original work with the aim of accessing opiophobia among doctors toward (chronic) patients with severe pain. There was a lot of research work that has been done on opiophobia in developed countries and few Pakistani researchers have also worked on opiophobia and its impact on pain management but still, no scale has been developed to measure the extent or tendency of opiophobia among doctors or patients. This scale can be used globally on both men and women doctors to access the tendency of opiophobia among them.

The study hypothesized that the impact of board diversity on financial distress (FD) is not direct but rather mediated by the firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Consequently, the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of CSR as a mediator in the board diversity–FD relationship.

The study examined six board diversity dimensions – age, gender, nationality, education and tenure in 81 nonfinancial Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX)-listed firms from 2010 to 2021. The CSR engagement of the sample firms is evaluated using a multidimensional financial approach and the likelihood of FD is computed using Altman’s Z-score. The system-generalized method of moments estimator is used to meet the study objectives. In addition, several tests are run to determine the robustness of the study’s findings.

Based on the procedure for mediation analysis outlined by Baron and Kenny (1986), the authors found that CSR is significantly inversely associated with the likelihood of FD. Second, board diversity variables age, gender and national diversity were positively associated with CSR. Third, board age, gender and national diversity are significantly inversely related to FD. Finally, it was found that there is partial mediation between board age diversity and FD, whereas full mediation is shown between board age diversity and FD and between board nationality diversity and FD.

This study provides practical insights into PSX’s board diversity for companies, regulators and policymakers.

This research studies the connection between board diversity and FD. In addition, the current study extended the analysis by testing for the first time the mediating role of CSR in the diversity–distress relationship, particularly in the context of an emerging economy.

The purpose of this study is to look at the effect of financial leverage on the performance of Saudi listed companies. It particularly proposes to examine the heterogeneity of this relationship depending on firm profitability and firm size.

The paper uses a sample of 120 nonfinancial companies listed on the Tadawul stock exchange during the period 2017–2020. Data is obtained from the companies’ financial reports. This study uses the system GMM and the quantile regression. The first methodology examines the effect of leverage decisions on firm performance, whereas the second one tests the heterogeneity of this relationship.

GMM results demonstrate the adverse effect of leverage on firm performance in terms of return on assets, return on equities and Tobin’s Q. Besides, quantile regression results show that this relationship is heterogeneous. Particularly, leverage seems to have a greater adverse effect on the performance of high-profitable firms than low-profitable firms. Moreover, leverage has a negative effect in larger firms, whereas the influence becomes negative in smaller ones.

This study is unique in that it approaches the capital structure issue from a different perspective, where the leverage decision is distinctly considered at various levels of firm profitability and firm size. In addition, the majority of the existing studies is carried out in developed countries. However, the results might not apply to emerging countries given the specificity of their institutional structure. In this regard, Saudi Arabia has a distinctive business climate characterized by the absence of corporate tax and an illiquid bond market.