The MAastricht Instrument for Sustainable Employability – Italian version (MAISE-IT): a validation study

Abstract

Background Governments and employers aim to promote sustainable employability (SE) in aging societies. In the Netherlands, an instrument for capturing the employee perspective on SE, the MAastricht Instrument for Sustainable Employability (MAISE-NL), has recently been developed. This study seeks to validate the Italian version of the MAISE (MAISE-IT). Methods The MAISE-IT (a translated and culturally adapted version of the MAISE for the Italian population), the Work-Health Balance questionnaire and a demographic survey (age, gender, education, and occupational activity) were completed online by 455 respondents (328 public administration workers and 127 respondents recruited from social networks). Construct and criterion validity were tested by CFA; reliability, correlational analyses and subgroup differences with ANOVAs. Results The CFA analysis revealed that the MAISE-IT consists of 12 scales distributed in four areas: (1) Meaning of SE; (2) Level and Factors affecting SE; (3) Overall responsibility for SE; and (4) Responsibility for factors affecting SE. Construct and criterion validity and reliability were good. Italian workers reported a moderately high level of SE. They regarded employers to be somewhat more responsible for SE than employees. Conclusions This study showed the validity of the MAISE-IT in the Italian context. The MAISE-IT is valuable for tapping employees’ needs in order to develop SE interventions tailored to the employee perspective.

Validation of the MAastricht Instrument of Sustainable Employability (MAISE-NL) Adapted for Employees in Low-Skilled Jobs (MAISE-Easy)

“…In addition, the MAISE-Easy was specifically developed for employees in low-skilled jobs and hence had a different target group than the MAISE-NL. We consider the MAISE-Easy a new instrument, and therefore, we decided to take an integral approach to analyzing the psychometric properties of the MAISE-Easy; we first performed an exploratory factor analysis, and in the second step, we performed a confirmatory factor analysis [17].…”

Italian Entertainment Professionals’ Sustainable Employability: What Factors to Consider? A Network Analysis

“…As our results showed, these practices have the potential to significantly contribute to the development of Italian entertainment professionals' health capabilities that nevertheless scored quite below average among our sample. As detected by a previous study involving workers of the Italian public sector, Italian entertainment professionals reported quite high levels of productivity capabilities and task performance, compared to lower reported levels of health capabilities [15]. Sensitization of Italian employers to comprehensive SE interventions aimed at simultaneously building productivity and health capabilities is, therefore, advocated.…”

“…Overall, none of the existing studies specifically focused on entertainment workers so far. Studies focusing on the sustainability of the Italian work context, which is traditionally represented by some peculiarities, are also limited (e.g., [15]).…”

Evaluating employability in contexts of change: validation of a scale

“…However, they are only interested in socio-educational interventions for adolescents and young people. Some studies use the concept of sustainable employability (e.g., Jabeen et al, 2022 ; Picco et al, 2022 ), connecting personal and social resources to meet labor market demands and develop personal potential and aspirations. For example: the Maastricht Instrument for Sustainable Employability ( Houkes et al, 2020 ) focuses on the areas of meaning of sustainable employability, the level of sustainable employability, factors that affect sustainable employability, general responsibility for sustainable employability, and responsibility for the factors that affect sustainable employability.…”