Papers by Margherita Pasini
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
In recent years, work-related stress has grown exponentially and the negative impact that this co... more In recent years, work-related stress has grown exponentially and the negative impact that this condition has on people’s health is considerable. The effects of work-related stress can be distinguished in those that affect workers (e.g., depression and anxiety) and those that affect the company (e.g., absenteeism and productivity). It is possible to distinguish two types of prevention interventions. Individual interventions aim at promoting coping and individual resilience strategies with the aim of modifying cognitive assessments of the potential stressor, thus reducing its negative impact on health. Mindfulness techniques have been found to be effective stress management tools that are also useful in dealing with stressful events in the workplace. Organizational interventions modify the risk factors connected to the context and content of the work. It was found that a restorative workplace (i.e., with natural elements) reduces stress and fatigue, improving work performance. Further...
A saúde e a segurança no local de trabalho fazem parte das políticas de âmbito social e de empreg... more A saúde e a segurança no local de trabalho fazem parte das políticas de âmbito social e de emprego da União Europeia, sob os Princípios e Direitos Fundamentais no Trabalho. No entanto, apesar de existir um vasto investimento na prevenção de riscos, ainda há grandes desafios no que diz respeito aos riscos psicossociais e ao stress no trabalho. O impacto negativo dos riscos psicossociais e do stress no bem-estar e na produtividade representa um custo para muitas organizações, mas especialmente para as pequenas e médias empresas (PMEs). O projeto "Desenvolver competências de resiliência face ao stress @PMEs" (DeSTRESS) pretende desenvolver uma formação inovadora para responder a este problema. Baseando-se no estado da arte da investigação científica, está a ser desenvolvida uma formação com base num jogo inovador e utilizando uma plataforma digital. Este jogo está a ser desenvolvido usando as técnicas mais recentes de gamificação e formação baseada em jogos, complementadas po...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2022
There is an urgent need to understand factors that promote physical activities (PA) because it is... more There is an urgent need to understand factors that promote physical activities (PA) because it is one of the modifiable risk factors for global mortality. None of the previous reviews considered both perceived and objective characteristics of the same environment. The first aim was to review the literature on studies investigating the relationship between PA behavior of adults and perceived and objective physical environment measures. The second aim was to verify the potential mediational role of the perceived measure in the relationship between the objective measure of the environment and PA using meta-analytic SEM. Only 15 studies reported a relationship between PA and both environmental measures. One of the most studied characteristics of the physical environment is the accessibility to recreational/PA facilities. Both objective and subjective measures of accessibility to PA facilities are associated with PA. Meta-SEM results suggest a significant effect of the objective accessib...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2022
The present study provides evidence for a valid and reliable tool, the Academic Quality at Work T... more The present study provides evidence for a valid and reliable tool, the Academic Quality at Work Tool (AQ@workT), to investigate the quality of life at work in academics within the Italian university sector. The AQ@workT was developed by the QoL@Work research team, namely a group of expert academics in the field of work and organizational psychology affiliated with the Italian Association of Psychologists. The tool is grounded in the job demands-resources model and its psychometric properties were assessed in three studies comprising a wide sample of lecturers, researchers, and professors: a pilot study (N = 120), a calibration study (N = 1084), and a validation study (N = 1481). Reliability and content, construct, and nomological validity were supported, as well as measurement invariance across work role (researchers, associate professors, and full professors) and gender. Evidence from the present study shows that the AQ@workT represents a useful and reliable tool to assist universi...
Indicatori e costrutti in psicometria, 2007
Molti autori hanno offerto il loro contributo all'argomento dibattuto della validità dei test psi... more Molti autori hanno offerto il loro contributo all'argomento dibattuto della validità dei test psicologici. Il concetto di validità, ovvero il grado con cui uno strumento misura ciò che deve misurare, sembra essere semplice fintanto che non si consulta la letteratura sull'argomento. Questo contributo vuol essere una rassegna critica utile agli psicologi, sia orientati alla teoria che alla pratica.
This electronic file may not be altered in any way. The author(s) of this article is/are permitte... more This electronic file may not be altered in any way. The author(s) of this article is/are permitted to use this PDF file to generate printed copies to be used by way of offprints, for their personal use only. Permission is granted by the publishers to post this file on a closed server which is accessible to members (students and staff) only of the author’s/s’ institute. For any other use of this material prior written permission should be obtained from the publishers or through the Copyright Clearance Center (for USA: www.copyright.com). Please contact [email protected] or consult our website: www.benjamins.com
Methodologies and Intelligent Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning, 8th International Conference, 2018
Focusing on an online survey in psychological research, we evaluated the usability of the device ... more Focusing on an online survey in psychological research, we evaluated the usability of the device chosen to complete the survey and examined underlying reasons through a usability enquiry method. The participants were 149 undergraduate students who completed a questionnaire for assessing achievement emotions and motivation, with open-ended and closed-ended questions. They also evaluated the usability of the device chosen to complete the survey and reported underlying reasons. We analyzed the data with Generalized Linear Mixed Models. The devices chosen to complete the survey were perceived as highly usable, even if usability was lower for smartphones compared to other devices such as personal computers, notebooks, and tablets. The most relevant reasons regarded characteristics of the tools, followed by those of the tasks and then of users and environments. The findings are discussed taking into account their theoretical and applied relevance for monitoring and improving online psychological assessment.
Welcome to The European Conference on Psychological Assessment iv Oral Sessions Organizing Instit... more Welcome to The European Conference on Psychological Assessment iv Oral Sessions Organizing Institutions ix Oral Session 1-Clinical & Health Psychology p.56 Organizing Committee x Oral Session 2-Educational Psychology p.58 Scientific Committee x Oral Session 3-Organizational & Social Psychology p.61 Reviewers xi Oral Session 4-Clinical & Health Psychology p.64 Sponsors xii Oral Session 5-Methodology p.66 Keynote Speakers' Biographies xiii Oral Session 6-Organizational & Social Psychology p.69 Venue xvi Oral Session 7-Personality p.71 Program Overview xviii Oral Session 8-Clinical & Health Psychology Symposium 8-Methodology p.42 Oral Session 33-Methodology p.131 Symposium 9-Personality p.44 Oral Session 34-Organizational & Social Psychology p.134 Symposium 10-Clinical & Health Psychology p.46 Poster Sessions Symposium 11-Organizational & Social Psychology p.48 1 p.137 Symposium 12-Educational Psychology p.50 2 p.166 Symposium 13-Clinical & Health Psychology p.53 Author Index p.194 Symposium 14-Intelligence
The European health psychologist, 2015
ehps.net/ehp The European Health Psychologist “Participative Prevention of Psychosocial Emergent ... more ehps.net/ehp The European Health Psychologist “Participative Prevention of Psychosocial Emergent Risks in SME's” (PPPSER) was a European Project, funded by the European Commission (VS/2014/0053), with the participation of four European countries -Portugal, Italy, Spain and Greeceand coordinated by BRU-IULBusiness Research Unit, ISCTE-IUL – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal. The project, with the duration of one year, aimed at transferring knowledge on psychosocial risks prevention to a number of stakeholders with a specific emphasis on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The present article presents an overview of the project’s objectives, the description of the project’s activities and main results, as an example of a good cooperation between academia and the practitioners with regard to the prevention of psychosocial risks. More information can be found at the project’s website: http://risksinsmes.wix.com/risksinsmes
This brief communication wants to draw greater attention to the role of physical environment in t... more This brief communication wants to draw greater attention to the role of physical environment in the psychological restoration process. Given the benefits deriving from contact with Nature, urban designers should also attend the human need for psychological restoration. According to the Attention Restoration Theory, performance, mood and wellbeing benefit from exposure to environments attracting effortless involuntary attention and demanding little voluntary attention; this process called fascination, mostly occurs in natural environments though our exploratory studies showed that also urban settings/buildings can be high on fascination. Using knowledge of our affinity for Nature, experiences of wellbeing can also be generated through the environments we create (biophilic architecture). Fascination with Nature is derived not only from natural elements, but also from the qualities and attributes of Nature people find appealing and aesthetically pleasing when reproduced in the built en...
Welcome to The European Conference on Psychological Assessment iv Oral Sessions Organizing Instit... more Welcome to The European Conference on Psychological Assessment iv Oral Sessions Organizing Institutions ix Oral Session 1-Clinical & Health Psychology p.56 Organizing Committee x Oral Session 2-Educational Psychology p.58 Scientific Committee x Oral Session 3-Organizational & Social Psychology p.61 Reviewers xi Oral Session 4-Clinical & Health Psychology p.64 Sponsors xii Oral Session 5-Methodology p.66 Keynote Speakers' Biographies xiii Oral Session 6-Organizational & Social Psychology p.69 Venue xvi Oral Session 7-Personality p.71 Program Overview xviii Oral Session 8-Clinical & Health Psychology Symposium 8-Methodology p.42 Oral Session 33-Methodology p.131 Symposium 9-Personality p.44 Oral Session 34-Organizational & Social Psychology p.134 Symposium 10-Clinical & Health Psychology p.46 Poster Sessions Symposium 11-Organizational & Social Psychology p.48 1 p.137 Symposium 12-Educational Psychology p.50 2 p.166 Symposium 13-Clinical & Health Psychology p.53 Author Index p.194 Symposium 14-Intelligence
The importance of the education in informatics, also in non-vocational curricula, was recognized ... more The importance of the education in informatics, also in non-vocational curricula, was recognized in the Italian school system many years ago. The introduction of the new discipline in a complex and articulated educational organization is still a work in development and its implementation may differ a lot across schools. Hence, computing background of bachelor students is really diverse. The teacher in this situation has to manage very different levels of skills and students often have to cope with failures and frustration. So, also motivation and emotions could have a role in determining performance. In this work, we present an early stage analysis of the connection between motivation, emotions and performance in initial learning of programming for bachelor students in Applied Mathematics in Verona. Performance in programming correlated positively with believes on control and negatively with anger and hopelessness. This finding supports the relevance of intervention programs promoti...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021
Prior cross-sectional research indicates that the negative effects of quantitative job insecurity... more Prior cross-sectional research indicates that the negative effects of quantitative job insecurity (i.e., threat to job loss) on employees’ wellbeing are fully mediated by qualitative job insecurity (i.e., threat to job characteristics). In the current longitudinal study, we replicated and further extended this view to include a direct effect of qualitative job insecurity on quantitative job insecurity. We explored these reciprocal relations in the context of their concurrent effects on work related outcomes by means of dual-mediation modelling. We identified a wide range of the outcomes, classified as: job strains (i.e., exhaustion, emotional and cognitive impairment), psychological coping reactions (i.e., job satisfaction, work engagement, turnover intention), and behavioral coping reactions (i.e., in-role and extra role performance, counterproductive behavior). We employed a three-wave panel design and surveyed 2003 Flemish employees. The results showed that the dual-mediation mod...
Frontiers in Psychology, 2020
The influence of Positive Affect (PA) on people's well-being and happiness and the related positi... more The influence of Positive Affect (PA) on people's well-being and happiness and the related positive consequences on everyday life have been extensively described by positive psychology in the past decades. This study shows an application of Latent Growth Mixture Modeling (LGMM) to explore the existence of different trajectories of variation of PA over time, corresponding to different groups of people, and to observe the effect of emotion regulation strategies on these trajectories. We involved 108 undergraduates in a 1-week daily on-line survey, assessing their PA. We also measured their emotion regulation strategies before the survey. We identified three trajectories of PA over time: a constantly high PA profile, an increasing PA profile, and a decreasing PA profile. Considering emotion regulation strategies as covariates, reappraisal showed an effect on trajectories and class membership, whereas suppression regulation strategy did not.
Sustainability, 2020
In this study, we test whether different types of safety leadership styles predict different empl... more In this study, we test whether different types of safety leadership styles predict different employees’ change-oriented discretionary communications about safety (i.e., safety voice) after controlling for proactive personality disposition to improve organizational sustainability. Building upon a multidimensional model of safety voice, which attempts to conceptualize different ways in which employees make suggestions about safety procedures, we developed four realistic scenarios in which we manipulated the supervisor’s safety leadership style, including: (1) transformational safety leadership, (2) transactional safety leadership, (3) passive safety leadership, and (4) control group (i.e., no leadership at all). We randomly assigned 103 participants to two of four scenarios and measured four facets of safety voice and proactive personality dispositions. The findings showed that after controlling for the respondents’ proactive personality, transformative safety leadership predicted pro...
Journal of Safety Research, 2020
Introduction: This paper represents a first attempt to fill a gap in research about different spe... more Introduction: This paper represents a first attempt to fill a gap in research about different specific climates and safety outcomes, by empirically identifying patterns of climates and exploring the possible effect of different climates at the department level on some specific safety outcomes. The first objective was to explore how different specific climates (safety, communication, diversity and inclusion) can be associated to each other, considering the department level of analysis. The second objective was to examine the relationships between those patterns of climates with safety performance (compliance and participation behaviors). Method: A total of 429 blue-collar workers in 35 departments answered a questionnaire covering safety, diversity, inclusion, and communication climate measures. Cluster analysis was performed to identify clusters of departments with different climate patterns and their impact on safety compliance and safety participation behaviors. Subsequently, a hierarchical multiple linear regression was conducted at the individual-level to test the effect of climate patterns, by controlling for some sociodemographic variables. Results: Results showed the existence of four differentiated clusters of departments. Three of those clusters showed homogenous patterns (coherent association among perceptions of low, medium and high climates) and one heterogeneous (low and medium perceptions). The findings also revealed that the higher the climates perceptions, the higher the levels of safety participation and safety compliance, with safety participation being more affected than compliance. Conclusions: The present research showed the associated effects of some organizational climate factors, such as fair treatment, inclusion, safety and communication within the organization, which had not been previously studied in their combined relationships, on safety behaviors. Practical applications: Several other organizational climate factors, such as fair treatment, inclusiveness and communication, may play an important role in safety, showing the importance of broadening the focus on safety climate as one of the main predictors of safety behaviors.
Nonlinear dynamics, psychology, and life sciences, 2018
Conceptualizing affect as a complex nonlinear dynamic process, we used latent class extended mixe... more Conceptualizing affect as a complex nonlinear dynamic process, we used latent class extended mixed models (LCMM) to understand whether there were unobserved groupings in a dataset including longitudinal measures. Our aim was to identify affect profiles over time in people vicariously exposed to terrorism, studying their relations with personality traits. The participants were 193 university students who completed online measures of affect during the seven days following two terrorist attacks (Paris, November 13, 2015; Brussels, March 22, 2016); Big Five personality traits; and antecedents of affect. After selecting students whose negative affect was influenced by the two attacks (33%), we analysed the data with the LCMM package of R. We identified two affect profiles, characterized by different trends over time: The first profile comprised students with lower positive affect and higher negative affect compared to the second profile. Concerning personality traits, conscientious-ness ...
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 2017
The paper presents an empirical study centred on a participatory game design activity with 8-10 y... more The paper presents an empirical study centred on a participatory game design activity with 8-10 years old primary-school children, split in different sessions. The study assesses how children perform in game design and whether they are engaged in design tasks. To this end, the study gathers data concerning the quality of children's game design products, regarded as indicators of children's performance in game design. It collects data concerning children's emotions, which are taken as indicators of their engagement in game design. The paper statistically analyses and discusses how emotions and quality of products evolve across the game design experience, and how emotions are related to children's quality of products. Results of this work can help researchers, educators and practitioners manage a complex design experience with and for children, and identify key emotions for promoting quality of design work.
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2016
In this paper we analyze an application of eXtreme Apprenticeship (XA) methodology, in a blended ... more In this paper we analyze an application of eXtreme Apprenticeship (XA) methodology, in a blended form with a reduced set of software and human resources. The study was conducted at University of Verona, in the context of the course "Programming with Laboratory" with 170 participants enrolled at the first degree in Applied Mathematics, throughout three different academic years. We analyze the very first period of lessons, when the fundamentals of programming are introduced. During the first two years, students were trained with a traditional teaching method; the lasts group was trained using the XA teaching model. Results showed a real improvement of learning outcomes in students trained with XA compared with the traditional teaching method. Possible refinements of XA method in our case study and in other educational contexts are discussed.
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2015
Co-design with children comes with methods and techniques for creating technological products wit... more Co-design with children comes with methods and techniques for creating technological products with children, such as video-game prototypes. When co-design takes place in schools, learners' involvement and enjoyment of codesign become crucial concerns for researchers. But how to measure emotions, more in general, and involvement in a co-design study with children? This paper presents a co-design study, run with a novel co-design method at school, for involving children in co-design groups and emotionally engaging them in producing game prototypes. It explains how emotional engagement and inclusion can be and were operationalized and measured in the co-design study, thereby providing feedback to co-design researchers interested in measuring the same constructs.
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Papers by Margherita Pasini