A relevant aim of research in education is to find and study the reasoning lines that students deploy when dealing with problematic situations. This can be done through an analysis of the answers students give to a questionnaire. In this paper, we discuss some methodological aspects involved in the quantitative analysis of a questionnaire by means…

We assess the relationship between general literacy skills and health status by analysing data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), an international survey of about 250,000 adults aged 16-65 years conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) from 2011-15 in 33…

Videoconferencing technology is a successful tool for expanding possibilities for collaborative and distance learning, while bridging the distance between the teacher and students, providing time and cost savings. Recently, the focus in literature and practice for quality requirements are shifting from deterministic behavior of the infrastructure…

The present study investigated the stability of friendship nominations over the course of a school year as a function of early adolescents' and their classroom best friends' internalizing symptoms (i.e., depression, anxiety, and somatization). Sample consisted of 156 early adolescents (57.1% female; X-bar age = 12.62; SD = 0.62) involved in 78…

Even if mind wandering (MW) and mindfulness have traditionally been intended as separate and antithetical constructs, the roles of these 2 mental states on creative behavior were jointly explored in this article. In particular, MW was analyzed in light of a recent approach suggesting a differentiation between deliberate and spontaneous MW, whereas…

This article examines the long-run effect of higher education, measured in average years of tertiary schooling, on the level and growth rate of national per capita income. It uses an improved dataset on educational attainments which not only reduces measurement error but also overcomes data comparability issues and allows us to estimate the…

Humans and other animals are able to make rough estimations of quantities using what has been termed the "approximate number system" (ANS). Much evidence suggests that sensitivity to numerosity correlates with symbolic math capacity, leading to the suggestion that the ANS may serve as a start-up tool to develop symbolic math. Many…

In the study, based on a representative sample of 26,670 Italian fifth-grade students, the authors examine the academic motivational profiles of immigrant and native students, as well as of boys and girls. To reliably estimate mean differences, the measurement invariance of a short version of the Academic Self-Regulation Questionnaire was first…

Group Work Learning Method is a cooperative learning technique that has positive effects in learning: students' active participation can increase both cognitive and social skills. Our work involved three cohorts of students of different years attending the same course at the University of Torino, Department of Psychology. The contents of the…

This article describes the development and validation of the Attitudes toward Sustainable Development scale, a quantitative 20-item scale that measures Italian university students' attitudes toward sustainable development. A total of 484 undergraduate students completed the questionnaire. The validity and reliability of the scale was statistically…

With a view to enhancing the entrepreneurial activity of universities, the authors explore the concepts and features of the "experimental lab", presenting it as an effective means of supporting entrepreneurial training programmes and helping students to turn ideas into actual start-ups. In this context, the term experimental lab refers…

We analyzed developmental changes in outsider behavior, testing whether the likelihood that it turns into bullying or defending over time depends on the individual proneness to feel shame or guilt. Participants were 155 preadolescents (72 boys and 83 girls; [X-bar][subscript age] at T1 = 10.74 years). Bullying, defending, and outsider behaviors…

The present study examined maternal responses to infants' spontaneous communicative behaviors in a sample of 20 extremely-low-gestational-age (ELGA) infants and 20 full-term (FT) infants during 30 minutes of play interaction when infants were 12 months of age. Relations between maternal responses and infants' communication skills at 12 and 24…

International assessments in higher education are especially challenging because differences across countries (e.g., educational systems, SES) increase the complexity of testing. This becomes even more challenging when using performance-based assessments, which are becoming more prominent in assessment programs. ANVUR collaborated with the Council…

Among the wide range of factors related to the acquisition of statistical knowledge, competence in basic mathematics, including basic probability, has received much attention. In this study, a mediation model was estimated to derive the total, direct, and indirect effects of mathematical competence on statistics achievement taking into account…