The de-institutionalisation of psychiatric patients has led to the construction of various forms of residential facilities for people with mental illness in the community. This study had two aims: to identify the types of residential facilities for psychiatric patients and to determine whether there are differences between patients who live in different types of these. A mixed method approach was used. Interviews with the managers of 13 residential facilities were carried out. Quantitative data about the environmental characteristics, human resources, and characteristics of patients recovered of each residential facility were collected. We identified 8 types of facilities. The characteristics of the psychiatric patients of each residential facility were significantly different from those of the patients of the others. The classification of residential facilities for psychiatric patients is useful for describing different approaches to care that are used in community interventions and the identify the specificity of each approaches.

Several researchers have demonstrated that dyslexia develops differently in shallow orthographies in terms of accuracy and speed. In fact, slow reading speed persists and accuracy improves. The aim of this study is to investigate the evolution of the specific reading disorder over the years of compulsory education, from primary to upper secondary school. Furthermore, it has the aim to verify if there are different evolutionary trajectories of reading skills in relation to the severity of the disorder. The study was carried out on 71 Italian dyslexic children, according to the diagnostic criteria established by the diagnostic manual ICD – 10 and the Consensus Conference. Two groups were selected: children who met criteria for mild dyslexia (mild dyslexics, with n=36) and a comparison group of moderatesevere dyslexics (n=35). All participants were tested at least twice in two different school grades. Comparisons were made on the average performances in each school grade. The results reveal similar patterns of growth over time in reading ability, with the mild dyslexics group outperforming the moderate-severe dyslexics group. The performance trajectory for the moderate-severe dyslexics shows some plateaus and a decrease in performances in the last year analyzed (1st upper secondary school) while the trajectory for the mild dyslexics always show increases in performances. All subjects show a steady increase in word and text reading speed and a slower improvement in pseudo-word decoding.

Job crafting refers to actions carried out by workers in order to bring their job demands and job resources at a preferred level. Crafting behaviors are measured by the Dutch Job Crafting Scale (JCS). The Italian version of the JCS includes the following three positive factors: increasing structural job resources, social job resources and challenging job demands. To assess the factorial validity of the scale, an exploratory factor analysis (N=311) and confirmatory factor analyses (N=410) were performed. Convergent and criterion validity were investigated through correlations with other variables. Factor analyses showed a good three-factor structure, in line with the literature. Moreover, as expected, job crafting behaviors were correlated with work self-efficacy, work engagement and job performance. Results suggest that the Italian version of the JCS can be reliably used to measure job crafting.

Besides responding to the need to develop a version of the Achievement Goal Questionnaire-Revised (AGQ-R, Elliot & Murayama, 2008) in the Italian language supporting its construct and criterion validity, this work aimed at testing its measurement invariance across a variety of factors and providing new data on cross-sectional age, gender, and domain differences, particularly to extend the understanding of mastery-avoidance goals. The participants were 365 fourth, seventh, and eleventh-graders, who completed two versions of the AGQ-R referred to Italian and mathematics. We also examined responses of the American participants involved in the development of the original instrument. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the goodness of the hypothesized model, characterized by scalar invariance across country, metric invariance across class level, and uniqueness invariance across gender. Structural equation models showed that first-term performance positively predicted the four goal types, while mastery-approach goals positively predicted second-term performance and pleasantness. Achievement goals, higher for Italian for eleventhgraders and females, decreased at increasing ages. Notwithstanding limitations, our data support the validity of this version of the AGQ-R with primary and secondary school students.

Literature underlines the role of the organizational orientation toward innovation as a precursor of its effective capability to generate and adopt innovations, in this way gaining competitive advantages. However less attention has been devoted to the methodological issues concerning how to measure this construct. Indeed, the few existing measures are often one-dimensional and neglect the multiple facets of this construct. In this paper we examine the multidimensional IOI-Inventory of Organizational Innovativeness (Tang, 1999) with the aim of verifying its psychometrics properties, validating it in the Italian context, and exploring the relationships among its dimensions and other related constructs (servant leadership, climate for support to innovation, climate for participative safety) and outcomes (performance and innovation adoption). Results of the confirmatory factor analysis on a sample of 616 Italian employees did not support the theoretical 9-factor structure. The subsequent exploratory factor analysis attested for a 6-factor model in line with the empirical solution emerged in a previous research. Results of the correlations confirmed the relationship of the IOI’s dimensions with both correlated and outcomes measures. Overall, findings of this study attested for the good psychometric properties of the IOI and support that this inventory is a reliable and valid measure of the organizational orientation toward innovation to be used to assess the different facets that contribute to promote the innovation adoption.