1,720,966 research outputs found
Covid-19 Outbreak In Italy: Are We Ready for the Psychosocial and the Economic Crisis? Baseline Findings From the PsyCovid Study
No full textThe Covid-19 pandemic is burning all over the world. National healthcare systems are facing the contagion with incredible strength, but concern regarding the psychosocial and economic effects is growing quickly. The PsyCovid Study assessed the influence of psychosocial variables on individual differences from the perceived impact of the Covid-19 outbreak on the issues of health and economy in the Italian population. Italian volunteers from different regions completed an online anonymous survey. The main outcomes were the perceived impact of the Covid-19 outbreak on health and the economy. A two-way MANOVA evaluated differences in the main outcomes, with geographical area (northern, central, and southern regions) and professional status (healthcare workers or not) as factors. We then tested the relationship linking psychosocial variables (i.e. perceived distress and social isolation, empathy, and coping style) to the main outcomes through two different mediation models. 1163 responders completed the survey (835 females; mean age: 42 ± 13.5 y.o.; age range: 18-81 y.o.) between March 14 and 21, 2020. Healthcare workers and people living in northern Italy reported a significantly worse outbreak impact on health, but not on the economy. In the whole sample, distress and loneliness were key variables influencing the perceived impact of the Covid-19 outbreak on health, while empathy and coping style affected the perceived impact on the economy. The Covid-19 pandemic is a worldwide emergency in terms of psychological, social, and economic consequences. Our data suggests that in the Italian population, actual differences in individual perception of the Covid-19 outbreak severity for health are dramatically modulated by psychosocial frailty (i.e., distress and loneliness). At the same time, problem-oriented coping strategies and enhanced empathic abilities increase people's awareness of the severity of the impact of the Covid-19 emergency on economics. There is an immediate need for consensus guidelines and healthcare policies to support interventions aimed to manage psychosocial distress and increase population resilience towards the imminent crisis
Development of the Italian version of the 42-item Chronic Pain Coping Inventory, CPCI-I: cross-cultural adaptation, factor analysis, reliability and validity
No full textJob loss and health threatening events modulate risk-taking behaviours in the Covid-19 emergency
No full textCovid-19 pandemic is exerting a tragic impact all around the world. First-person experience of life-threatening and stressful events can modify individuals’ risk perception, and, consequently, risk-taking behaviours. Here we investigated risk-taking profiles in 130 Italian residents, and compared healthcare to non-healthcare workers, during the lockdown phase. We ad hoc developed the “Covid-19 Risk Task”, including the classic monetary Holt-Laury Paired Lottery Task (Monetary Condition, MC) and two new ecological conditions exploring Covid-19 related risk-taking aptitudes in relation to different health (Health Status Condition, HsC) and employment (Employment Status Condition, EsC) outcomes. Results showed that, in the whole sample, individuals were more risk-averse in MC than in HsC and EsC. Moreover, a payoff increase produced a shift toward more risk-averse behaviours in MC, but not in HsC and EsC, where we found an opposite trend suggesting a more risk-loving behaviour. Finally, we found that healthcare workers were significantly less risk-averse compared to non-healthcare workers in EsC, but not in MC and HsC. These findings provided evidence of the possible effects of Covid-19 outbreak on risk-taking aptitudes. The negative impact on human choices and, consequently, on the whole world economy of this catastrophic life event must not be underestimated
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Development of the Italian version of the 42-item Chronic Pain Coping Inventory, CPCI-I: cross-cultural adaptation, factor analysis, reliability and validity
No full textPURPOSE: The aim of this study was to translate and adapt the Italian version of the Chronic Pain Coping Inventory (CPCI) and validate the translation in subjects with chronic non-specific pain of the locomotor system. METHODS: The questionnaire was developed following international recommendations. The psychometric analyses included factor analysis, reliability by internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) and test-retest reliability (intraclass coefficient correlation, ICC), and construct validity by calculating the correlations between the subscales of the CPCI with measures of pain (numerical rating scale, NRS), disability (SIP-Roland Scale) and depression (CES-D) (Pearson's correlation). RESULTS: The CPCI was satisfactorily administered to 270 subjects with chronic non-specific pain. Results of confirmatory factor analyses revealed that, of the CPCI-I 8 subscales, 6 demonstrated good data-model fit (CFI and NFI ≥0.90, RMSEA ≤0.08). Cronbach's alpha was satisfactory in all of the subscales (0.71-0.80); the ICCs were good/excellent in all of the subscales (0.80-0.91). The correlations with the NRS, SIP-Roland and CES-D were poor in most cases as only the CPCI-Guarding subscale moderately correlated with disability (r = 0.31). CONCLUSION: The CPCI was successfully translated into Italian and proved to have a good factorial structure and psychometric properties similar to the original and adapted versions. The use of the Italian version of the CPCI is recommended for clinical and research purposes
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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