RISULTATI RICERCA

Interpretative Models for the Study of Disaffection of Students from the University System - The article provides a description and a conceptual analysis of some of the main and most accredited interpretative models in international literature on the phenomenon of university dispersion. The study, without the pretention of being exhaustive, should allow identification of guidelines and points of reference to understand the complexity of the phenomenon and to reflect on how to solve some of the conceptual and methodological problems currently present in Italy. In particular, reference is made to the institutional surveys on the quality of the training processes and on their results, which represent the official source of evaluation of the health state of our university.

The Quality of Life in Rome in a Health Perspective - This contribution lies in the opening between the interest of social research for a deeper understanding of phenomena tied to the quality of life, and the need to intervene in public health as well as identify priority areas of action for the promotion of peoples’ health and quality of life. The pilot study carried out in Rome in fact aimed to test a survey instrument on the quality of life from a health perspective. It analyzed the interaction between the environmental dimension, the social-economical and the psychosociological ones and their impact on the quality of life of people who live in urban areas. The purpose of this first contribution is to consider what might influence the promotion of wellbeing, in relation to different levels of human action (macro, meso and micro). The results underline a prominent influence of the psycho-sociological dimension on the perception of individual quality of life and a less substantial influence of the socio-economical one. The absence of a relation with the macro factor, which ecological data of the Municipalities of Rome characterizes as an element of urbanization of the territory, needs further investigation. This can be obtained through a sample survey that guarantees the representativeness of the Roman population.

Ethics in Health Care: Citizens’ Empowerment, Participation and Information. Roads to development? - The article underlines how techniques, rules, rights and ethics constitute, or could, a set of requirements and conditions needed to give shape to a legitimate clinical experimentation on human beings and, in particular, on subjects considered vulnerable. The article focuses on the relation between doctors, researchers, bio-ethic experts, lawyers, pharmaceutical promoters and citizens. It presents the heterogeneous knowledge and interests in ethical issues regarding health care, with overlapping of equity and equality in terms of access to clinical experimentation, as well as citizens’ difficulty in comprehending clinical experimentation and its effects. Finally, the study conducted with the focus group technique leads to a model that allows citizens and non-specialists to talk about participation and responsibility regarding clinical experimentation.

The In-visible city. A Spatial Statistical Analysis of Foreigners’ Location in the Municipality of Rome - This contribution is aimed at builgin a sort of social geography of multicultural cohabitation in the municipality of Rome and identifying ethnic locations based a series of statistical indicators - some of which unpublished - with the use of certain instruments of spatial statistical analysis. The study is articulated on two levels. The first examines the urban areas and offers a horizontal overview of foreigners’ spatial distribution. The second takes into consideration units of analysis referred to different administrative divisions (City, Municipality, urban area). This is a vertical analysis that takes into account the specific aspects of a certain urban area compared to the city and municipality of reference.

Praise for Vagueness. An almost epistemological reflection on the present times - Numerous forms of vagueness and indeterminateness characterize linguistic interaction of daily life, as well as conceptualization and language of the social sciences. This is a problem that logicians and philosophers of science and language have faced repeatedly, in the attempt to eliminate this undesirable trait or limit the damage caused to the achievement of truth. Endeavoring to overturn this perspective, the essay aims to show the fertility and productiveness of this insurmountable margin of vagueness, both from a point of view of scientific creation and from that of safeguarding the fundamental critical state of thought and knowledge.

Relevance and Fecundity of the Concept of «Cultural Lags». A note on Ogburn - William F. Ogburn’s theory of «Cultural Lags» has suffered from misinterpretation and simplification in sociological literature. As a consequence it has been considered outdated, notwithstanding the fact that it is a structural interpretation of social change and not, perfunctorily, a description of two «cultures». The author, already conscious of such misinterpretations, presented a brief essay, published two years before his death, on suggestions and more specific hermeneutic statements regarding the theory. These uncover its usefulness as a conceptually versatile instrument, extremely important for the understanding of a series of phenomena that appear deeply rooted to the processes of globalization, with particular reference to dynamics of encounter among different historical and cultural configurations.

Social Sustainability and Tourist Consumption - The essay proposes a reflection on social sustainability in reference to tourist consumption. The goal is to analyze the transformation processes of typical in tourist attraction products and the role played by the local community in these processes. The transformation of a typical product into attraction is depicted as one of the most relevant aspects in contemporary models of tourist comsumption. These processes however are not free from contradictions and they produce important consequences in relation to dynamics of change of social relation models that regulate community life.

Internship: Training and Empowerment of the Subject. A Case Study - The starting point is observation of the crisis of the traditional model of transfer, which has oriented education practice in the past. The meaning and value or alternating theory and practice in training are taken into consideration in order to assess the importance of internships as an empowering device for the subject, destined to increase young people’s employment potential. This article aims to rethink internships as a guidance, training and pre-educating device that penetrates (or should) a wider area of innovative and shared teaching methods in the academic world.

Scientific Vocations between Crisis and Recovery: A Reflection on the Situation in Italy - Starting from a review of existing literature , the essay examines the more common evaluations of the so-called «scientific vocation crisis» in Italy. It is aimed at presenting the results of a small empirical study and help increase the number of etiological factors already explored in the literature. The second part presents the most recent quantitative data, showing the first signs of recovery in the rate of student enrolment for the field of the exact sciences. and explores possible reasons for recovery. Last, on the basis of additional data, it is hoped that further projects such as «Scientific Degrees» are implemented to provide incentives for enrolment in Doctoral programs in mathematical research.

Crimes and Perception of Criminality in the Residence Area: Indifference or Convergence? - According to a common conception - among researchers as well - there is no apparent relation between crime perception (or insecurity) indicated in surveys and the crime trend (indicated by the police force), since the perception seems to be influenced above all by what mass-media conveys. Literature indicates two dimensions of crime perception: social concern about criminality and personal fear of the phenomenon. However resorting to a useful empirical indicator, a third dimension may be contemplated between these two: the evaluation of criminality in the residence area. This article considers data that refers to the twenty Italian regions, collected by the National Institution for Statistics - Istat, regarding the Multipurpose Survey on Families. It describes the strong correlation existing between criminality perception in the residence area and the diffusion of certain kinds of predatory crimes, in particular those in which there is a strong author-victim interaction (robbery and bag-snatching) and those in which crime authors are interested in citizens’ relevant economical and symbolic goods (houses or cars).

Immigration and Security: Observation and Criticism on a Controversial Issue - Immigration and security have been paired as an object of discussion far too much. Though international experience teaches us that migrating processes lead to effects of higher and deeper insecurity, Italy has until now witnessed - both among scientists and among politicians - a tendency to deny the relationship between these two phenomena. However data clamorously contradicts this assumption. According to the most recent data available, more than 35% of the crimes are attributed to foreigners and 37% of the people in prison are foreigners. If we can share the idea, put forward by many, that data does not explain everything and is subject to influences of various nature that must be taken into consideration, the widespread attitude of denial is due to ideological options rather than any rigorous analysis of available data. However some studies in countertendency can help specify the state of the issue, identify aspects worthy of further investigation, and define the theoretical perspectives and methods most useful to continue research on this topic.

Back to Likert. Towards the Conversational Survey - For decades, the dilemma between open-ended and closed-ended response alternatives occupied the methodological debate. Over the years, dominant approaches in survey have reacted to this dilemma by opting for fixed response alternatives and the standardization of interviewer’s behaviour. If this methodological decision has been the survey’s fortune, making it the methodology most widely used in the social sciences, however it produces a large amount of biases well known in the literature. In order to re- medy these biases an alternative proposal can be designed by re-discovering and adapting two «old» proposals: Likert’s technique called «fixed question/free answers», and Galtung’s procedure named «open question/closed answer». Both procedures are guided by the same principle: make the interview into a conversation, let the interviewee answer freely in his/her own words, and thus release him/her from the researcher’s schemes.

Main topics of research in health psychology. A critical analysis of the 23rd European Congress of Health Psychology - The aim of this paper is to highlight the main research areas in health psychology in Europe through the critical analysis of presentations and posters at the last European Congress of Health Psychology, which was held in Pisa. Through the analysis of the congress programme and the abstract book we identified nine main areas: theories of behavioural change; health promotion interventions; illness perception and representations; coping strategies and self-regulation in the management of illness; the contribution of positive psychology to developments in health psychology; health in different stages of life; the psychophysiology of health and well-being; the health and well-being of workers and work organizations; research methods in health psychology. In every area considered, beyond classic contents, new developments and novel approaches were identified.

Health and writing processing of emotional experience at work - J.W. Pennebaker’s studies showed positive results on health through the use of the writing technique in different subjects. In line with these studies and Health Psychology’s goals, in this research we applied Pennebaker’s Writing Technique to subjects in a fire brigade sample who are often exposed to emotional experiences during their work. The sample was divided in three groups. The first group wrote about their most traumatic working experience (Negative exp. Gr.). The second group wrote about the most rewarding working experience (Positive exp. Gr.). The third group didn’t receive any writing task (Control Gr.). The aims of the present study were to assess: 1) an improvement on health parameters in the two writing groups in respect to the control group; 2) an effectiveness of writing in the Positive experience gr. in the short period, in the Negative experience gr. in the long period; 3) a possible interaction between writing and alexithymia levels. Comparing the data of the three groups we found out significant differences confirming our hypothesis on our three dependent variables: sick leave days (F = 3.60; p < 0.04); SCL-90 scores (F = 5.56; p < 0.0005) and number of physical examinations reported in the Health Interview (F = 4.11; p < 0.03). Regarding our second hypothesis, results of this study suggest the need of adapting the writing task instructions to the context for a more effectiveness of the technique. Finally, interaction between writing and alexithymia was not found, possibly due to low alexithymia levels in the sample in general.

Psychological implications of Lipodystrophy Syndrome as a collateral effect of HAART in HIV/AIDS people. A critical review - The aim of this review is to analyse the scientific literature in order to individuate the psychological aspects that have been studied concerning the impact of the Lipodystrophy syndrome, a symptomatic manifestation associated with antiretroviral therapy (HAART) for the treatment of HIV/AIDS infected patients. Three are the main guidelines emerging from the literature, respectively interested in the relations connecting lipodystrophy with the adherence to antiretroviral therapy, with the Quality of Life, and with the perceptions-evaluations of body changes. The results of the researches conducted in these three areas not always achieved consistent results, indicating the need for further investigations.