Converso, Daniela
Viotti, Sara http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9026-9334
Sottimano, Ilaria
Loera, Barbara
Molinengo, Giorgia
Guidetti, Gloria
Funding for this research was provided by:
Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca
Article History
Received: 20 July 2018
Accepted: 14 November 2019
First Online: 27 November 2019
Ethics approval and consent to participate
: In accordance with the country law, no ethical approval was required since no vulnerable individuals, patients, or minors took part in the study. The research protocol, was built in agreement with the Helsinki Declaration (and subsequent revisions) and the Italian regulations on data protection and privacy (Law n. 196/2003). Questionnaire was covered by a letter that openly described the research purposes, the anonymity of the data collection and treatment. The cover letter clearly stated the voluntary nature of participation and that questionnaire returns implied consent. The research group, in accordance with the organizational stakeholders of the involved hospitals (i.e., unions, worker representatives, top management, occupational health specialists), decided not to ask to workers to sign consent forms, to ensure unconditional anonymity of the data collection. In fact, the collection of the signed consent forms, practically, would have been resulted in a list of the names of the workers who did (and did not) choose to participate to the survey. Even if the risks to violate worker privacy could be minimized by adopting properly measures to ensure anonymity (e.g., by covering the information under professional secrecy), the involved stakeholders agreed to prevent this risk by avoiding to create any tracks regarding the identity of the workers who participated to the survey. The above described procedure to manage worker informed consent has been developed by the research team of the department of Psychology and is in accordance with the Italian Law 101/2018 on the workplace privacy and the National Institute Against Workplace Accidents (INAIL) guidelines concerning “The methodology for the assessment and management of work-related stress risk” (developed in compliance with the Italian Law 81/2008 on safety and health at work ExternalRef removed).
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: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interests with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.