Bahadur's stochastic comparison of asymptotic relative efficiency of combining infinitely independent tests in case of log-logistic distribution is proposed. Six free-distribution combination producers namely; Fisher, logistic, sum of p-values, inverse normal, Tippett's method and maximum of p-values were studied. Several comparisons among the six procedures using the exact Bahadur's slopes were obtained. These non-parametric procedures depend on the p-value of the individual tests combined.

The study evaluated the stability over time of the Q-CHAT (i.e., Quantitative-CHecklist for Autism in Toddler), a screening tool for the early detection of Autism. The Q-CHAT is filled by parents when the child is from 18-36 months old, and whether a risk score is found, the clinician refers the child to a more in-depth diagnostic evaluation. Previous studies demonstrated the measure test-retest reliability on a small time interval (1-6 months). Therefore, the present study tested the stability of the scores considering a larger time interval of 18 months. No previous studies have tested its measurement invariance over time. Since the tool is filled by parents during a large time span (18-36 months of life), it is imperative to understand whether there is an invariance over time in their evaluations. The Italian version of the Q-CHAT was completed by 282 parents of children with no pre-existing signs of risk of Autism. The Q-CHAT was administered when children were 18 months (T1) and then 18 months later (T2). The intraclass correlation coefficients for the test-retest reliability ranged from sufficient to moderate. The measurement invariance across time revealed a tolerable configural and metric invariance. Contrary, the scalar invariance was not met meaning that the means of the constructs are not invariant over time. The findings give a further demonstration of the reliability of the Q-CHAT. They give evidence that changes in the scores would reflect real changes in the construct itself, and not in the way individuals interpret the measure items.

Variable selection is a very helpful procedure for improving computational speed and prediction accuracy by identifying the most important variables that related to the response variable. Regression modeling has received much attention in several science fields. Firefly algorithm is one of the recently efficient proposed nature-inspired algorithms that can efficiently be employed for variable selection. In this work, chaotic firefly algorithm is proposed to perform variable selection for gamma regression model. A real data application related to the chemometrics is conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed method in terms of prediction accuracy and variable selection criteria. Further, its performance is compared with other methods. The results proved the efficiency of our proposed methods and it outperforms other popular methods.

We introduce a new distribution via the Marshall-Olkin generator called the Marshall-Olkin Log-logistic Erlang-Truncated Exponential (MOLLoGETE) distribution. Some structural properties of the distribution including series expansion of the density function, sub-models, hazard function, moments, conditional moments, mean deviations, distribution of order statistics, R´enyi entropy and maximum likelihood estimates are presented. The new density function is an infinite linear combinations of Burr XII-Erlang-Truncated Exponential distributions. The new generalization is applied to real data sets to evaluate the model performance.

Using a multilevel approach with a sample of 560 nurses, this study investigates the relationship between job satisfaction and a number of variables, particularly transformational leadership, found in the nursing literature. Job satisfaction is one of the most widely investigated outcomes in the nursing literature, and is very important because of its relations with other well-being, quality of service and managerial outcomes. The individual level antecedents investigated in this study are: organizational tenure, positive affectivity, independence at work, and transformational leadership. A multi-level focus is used since, as a further predictor of job satisfaction, we consider the variability in the perceptions of work group members (i.e., the disagreement among team members) on the transformational leadership style of their head nurses. We hypothesize that followers' inconsistent perceptions of their head nurse's leadership have a negative relation with job satisfaction. Results show that at the individual level, positive affectivity, independence at work and transformational leadership are positively related to job satisfaction, and the hypothesis that the variability of perceptions within the work group of the head nurse's transformational leadership has a negative relation with job satisfaction is confirmed. This study bears out the idea that the variability of leadership perceptions within work groups should be considered as an additional parameter, even more so when the team dimension is central for the profession in question.

Work intensification implies increased workload which, in turn, can impact on work engagement, and workaholism; however, their mutual relations have not received adequate scholarly attention up to now. This cross-cultural study, consistently with the Job Demands-Resources model, examined the association between workload and work engagement and verified if workaholism acted as a moderator. Moreover, we examined if cultural differences affected these associations. To this purpose, 416 Canadian and 412 Italian employees filled a cross-sectional questionnaire. The association between workload and work engagement varied significantly between countries, and was moderated by workaholism. Results discussed in view of the theoretical framework provide insights for both scholars and managers in terms of human resource management and job design.

Happiness is a multi-faceted phenomenon in individuals’ lives. It benefits our mental and physical health, social relations, employment, education, and environment. Pemberton Happiness Index (PHI) is a short and complete index covering general, hedonic, eudaimonic and social well-being. It considers the different timeframes of remembered and experienced well-being. The objective of the study is verifying if PHI, already validated in European and world countries is suitable for the Italian culture. The questionnaire was administered to 410 participants randomly divided into two groups to perform exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory (CFA) analyses, to examine Pearson’s correlations with other scales, and to assess internal consistency (Cronbach ɑ ). Through EFA and CFA, aligning with the original validation, the best solution indicated a unidimensional structure composed of Remembered Well-being and the Experienced Well-being score. Pearson’s correlations evinced strong positive correlations with psychological well-being and satisfaction with life and negative correlations with negative affect. PHI proves to be a concise and solid scale, suitable to the Italian culture. The strong positive correlations between PHI and life satisfaction and positive well-being confirm that individuals’ evaluation of happiness is a crucial step and that in Italian culture well-being is strongly related to optimal functioning, both for individuals and for healthy working places.

Introduction: The transformations that have affected the labour market in recent years have required companies to adapt to fast changes and to keep the pace of global competition. Consequently, workers have been confronted with multiple challenging demands: they have been required to develop flexibility in their jobs and to work faster and better, often with evident costs in terms of performance and their workplace well-being. Given these evidences, as also shown by some of the most recent developments in the field of Positive Work and Organizational Psychology, healthy organizations are those organizations that could resist to these challenges, because they engage in creating an environment that can promote employees' health and safety, maximising performance. Yet, healthy organizations support positive organizational behaviors through a coherent culture, a positive climate, and good practices. Healthy organizations might also create the conditions to encourage workers to perform job crafting behaviors, meant as proactive individual behaviours aimed at modifying job demands in order to adjust them to personal needs, motivations and talents, thus maximising well-being and performance. Objective: The aim of the study was to overview the state of the art of the debate about the relationship between job crafting and healthy organizations' factors by performing a scientometric analysis of job crafting. Therefore, the study was aimed to emphasize performances of countries, journals and authors, highlighting the dominant perspectives on the topic. Method: The starting point of the analysis was data recovery from the Scopus database using the term "job crafting" as search criterion within the title, abstract or keywords of the documents retrieved. The analysis was carried out with two softwares, R and VOSviewer, in order to investigate the growth of interest on the topic over the years, the scientific production of countries, journals and authors, the social structure of collaborative network, and the network of keywords. Results: 375 documents about job crafting were retrieved, showing a growing number of publications in recent years, with a preponderance of productions and citations in USA and Netherlands (where the construct was proposed and validated). Cluster analysis performed on the most frequently used keywords showed three main groups, each of them theoretical linked to workplace health: stimulus factors; Job Demands-Resources Model; health dimensions. Discussion: The present bibliometric analysis showed an increasing scientific interest toward job crafting and the importance of specific papers (that opened the two main perspective about it) for the whole research line. Through the cluster analysis of keywords network, it was underlined the relevance of constructs that promote healthy organizations in the scientific production on job crafting.

Nowadays, the labour market’s instability and flexibility has led to increased feelings of uncertainty, insecurity and precariousness in the workforce. With respect to psychological health, to date studies focused mainly on the consequences of the fear of losing the job as a whole (i.e. quantitative job insecurity), in comparison to the consequences of threat of losing valued job features (i.e. qualitative job insecurity). Understanding the psychological mechanisms that explain the process of stress experiences, deriving from qualitative job insecurity, may contribute to identify how to promote healthier workplaces. The present study aimed to examine the mediating role of precariousness of life in the relationship between qualitative job insecurity and mental distress, i.e. emotional exhaustion and psychological symptoms. Precariousness of life is a pervasive syndrome among temporary employees affecting their daily life. The Conservation Of Resources (COR) and dual labour market theories were used as theoretical framework to draw the research hypotheses. The sample was composed of 272 white and blue collar Italian temporary employees. The results of structural equation modelling revealed that qualitative job insecurity was positively and significantly related to emotional exhaustion and psychological symptoms. Furthermore, these relationships were mediated by precariousness of life: Goodness of fit indices of mediation model was satisfactory and indirect effects were significant, therefore supporting our hypotheses. This study provided additional evidence to the literature concerning job insecurity as it focused on temporary workers, examining the effect on mental health by qualitative job insecurity via precariousness of life. Practical implications were discussed.

A number of recent studies carried out in the education sector have re- vealed the incidence of burnout in school environments and have highlighted the principal psycho-social sources of burnout syndrome among teachers. This study attempts to look further at the results of a previous research car- ried out on a sample of 882 italian teachers. Using advanced statistcal tech- niques such as MIMIC modelling, it intends to verify whether the following psycho-social stress factors are significant as predictors: interpersonal rela- tions, workload, organisational conflict, role ambiguity, perceived role image, work-home interface. The scales we have adopted are the Maslach Burnout Inventory MBI-ES and the Cooper's occupational stress indicator (Cooper, Sloan and Williams, 2009) specifically adapted for Italian schools. Results have shown the clear predictive role of factors such as interpersonal conflict and home-work interface in determining the onset of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization among teachers.