Assessing quality of working life in academia

Research on quality of working life in academia appears surprisingly rare in many countries, and in some cases nearly absent. Trying to fill this gap, a team formed by W/O psychologists from 16 Italian universities developed a tool for the assessment of psychosocial risks as well as workers health and wellbeing in universities. The validation of this tool is theoretically based on the Job Demands-Resources model. QoL@Work proposes an evaluation method based on the J-DR Model and composed by a set of research tools focused on antecedents, mediators/moderators and outcomes. In order to finalize the validation of the tool a study was conducted on a sample of 1000 researchers/teachers from universities of North, Centre and South Italy. Factorial analysis and reliability check reported satisfying and promising evidence of the robustness of the tool. Measurement invariance across some socio-demographic variables was checked. Results indicated that the proposed tool is reliable and could be used for depicting university researchers/teachers’ health, wellbeing, and working conditions. Moreover, useful insights for implementing organizational interventions could also be obtained. The tool, proposed by a team of W/O psychologists from 16 Italian universities, aims to offer the academic community with a scientifically reliable diagnostic tool, able to suggest also useful insights for the improvement of working conditions and wellbeing.