JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES DEVELOPMENT

THE CHALLENGES AND MOTIVATORS OF INVESTIGATIVE SPORTS JOURNALISM IN PESHAWAR: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS

Amjid Khan — 2025-09-08

The investigative journalism is crucial for revealing corruption and abuse in global sports, but it faces major legal, financial, and technological hurdles. Even though it holds global significance, situations in certain high-pressure regional areas are still not well explored. In this regard, study involved semi-structured interviews with 16 experienced sports journalists in Peshawar. It used manual thematic analysis to identify key challenges, motivators, and perceptions. The field has significant limitations. These include a lack of institutional resources and funding at 45%, fear of legal and professional consequences at 20%, and strict editorial policies due to corporate & legal pressures at 35%. Even though many believe in accountability journalism, low government support at 50% and lack of public awareness at 40% hold back investigative efforts. The financial incentives at 40% and professional recognition at 30% are vital motivators, showing a need for better support. Without systemic changes, such as better legal protections, investment in resources, training, and public engagement, investigative sports journalism in KP will continue to face challenges. This study provides a framework to support journalism as important check on power in commercial and political sports environment.

INVESTIGATING THE EARLY CHILDHOOD CURRICULUM DESIGN & ITS CULTURAL RELEVANCE

Shazia Malik — 2025-09-11

This study investigates the cultural relevance of early childhood curriculum design, focusing on current educational practices that reflect and support the diverse cultural identities of young learners. Rooted in sociocultural learning theory, research examines extent to which culturally responsive curriculum promotes inclusion, boosts children engagement & strengthens their sense of belonging. A quantitative research method was adopted to administer 150 early childhood educators and curriculum developers over convenience sampling. The instrument investigated dimensions of cultural relevance, including classroom content, teaching strategies, institutional support, and teacher preparedness. The descriptive statistics were used to analyze data. Findings revealed that while educators generally recognize the value of culturally inclusive education, its practical execution remains inconsistent. Areas such as use of home languages, representation of diverse traditions, and integration of local cultural knowledge require attention. Teacher training and administrative support also emerged as critical factors influencing curriculum effectiveness. Study stressed that culturally relevant curriculum design is not an added feature but required foundation of early childhood education.

THE INFLUENCE OF SITUATIONAL LEADERSHIP ON SUSTAINABLE PERFORMANCE: MEDIATING ROLE OF INTELLECTUAL STIMULATION

Irfan Ullah Khan — 2025-09-13

The situational leadership trait emphasizes the need to adapt leadership style based upon competence and maturity of followers towards particular task at hand. This adaptability may lead to greater employees’ performance and institutional outcomes. Whereas, intellectual stimulation, as element of transformational leadership, involves inspiring followers to think creatively and critically examine existing challenging over innovations. This study aims to examine mediating role of intellectual stimulation in relationship between situational leadership and sustainable performance in the higher educational context by collecting data from teachers hailing from higher education institutions KP, Pakistan by using survey approach to explore diverse nature of relationships. The results confirmed existence of positive association and significant partial mediation in reaching the conclusion and making suitable decisions to contribute the existing knowledge from new perspectives. In this regard, some recommendations have been extracted from findings that may guide teachers, policy-makers and institutions for revisiting the phenomena in tailor-made format for ensuring the leadership role in sustainable performance over intellectual stimulation in contemporary competitive environment.

THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF INFRASTRUCTURE NEGLECT ON THE MOUNTAINOUS PERIPHERY: EVIDENCE FROM SKARDU-GILGIT ROAD, PAKISTAN

Karamat Hussain — 2025-09-16

The study examines socio-economic impacts of infrastructural negligence on the Shahrah-e-Baltistan, an important and a hazardous road network that links Gilgit to Skardu, Pakistan. Using a mixed-methodology, the study integrates quantitative data of 168 participants of survey (supplemented with official fatality statistics of 2000-2025) and the qualitative data of 70 respondents of the in-depth interview and open-ended responses. The study unveils a humanitarian crisis: frequent users are incurring huge losses in finances (χ² = 16.93, p < 0.001), hence road-related conditions have led to an increase of 124% in average annual deaths in twenty years. Road closure and loss of skilled professionals are also strongly positively correlated (p = 0.42, p< 0.001). This study highlights the overall need of communities to have immediate safety measures (28% prioritize protective barriers & upgradation of existing roads) and long-term solutions (65.4% advocate reconstruction and alternative road Shaghar Thang Road Project), especially tunnels in places of high risk. In this connection, the results conclude that neglect of infrastructure exemplifies regional inequality. Thus, it urges the urgent road rehabilitation and work on alternative routes to secure human costs and socioeconomic stability.

THE INFLUENCE OF INCLUSIVE LEADERSHIP ON WORKFORCE PERFORMANCE IN HEALTHCARE: A CROSS-SECTIONAL ANALYSIS

Yasir Hayat Mughal — 2025-09-18

The aim of this study was to examine direct effect of inclusive leadership on health workforce performance. For this drive, cross-sectional quantitative study design was adopted. The population of this study were health workers specifically nursing staff form hospitals and primary healthcare centers (PHCCs) in Qassim region of Saudi Arabia. Non-probability convenience sampling technique was used to select the sample size. There are 6547 nurses Saudi and non-Saudi, working in the healthcare organizations in public and private sector as per data form Ministry of Health (MOH). In this regard, the online questionnaire was distributed and total 400 complete questionnaires were received and used in the analysis. PLS-SEM was run to investigate the reliability and validity of the scales; Moreover, the structural models were developed to test hypotheses. The results provide significant information for reaching the conclusion. The findings revealed that scales are found reliable and valid as all values of Cronbach alpha, average variance extracted and composite reliability and factor loadings meth threshold. Two hypotheses are accepted and one is rejected. The openness and accessibility are found to have significant effect on job performance while availability was found to be insignificant.