The relation between job stressors and burnout is well established in the literature. However, the mechanisms behind this relationship are still not clear. This study has the main goal of analysing the mediating role of cognitive appraisal in the relation between occupational stress and burnout. Cognitive appraisals comprise primary appraisals, which are of the significance of a situation to the individual, and secondary appraisals, which involve evaluating the individual's ability to cope with stressors. To test the relationship between appraisals, stress and burnout, structural equation modelling was used in a sample of academic teaching staff (N = 333) working at a public university in Portugal. The participants completed a survey with measures that included their level of stress, cognitive appraisals of aspects of their work, and the Maslach Burnout Inventory–Educators Survey. The results indicated perceptions of distinct sources of stress on their work activity and a relation between stress, cognitive appraisal and burnout. Most importantly, the results showed that primary and secondary cognitive appraisals partially mediated the relationship between occupational stress and burnout at work, making the relationship between these variables a promising underlying mechanism for explaining responses to work-related stress.

The social cognitive model of well-being was tested in a sample of 373 college students in Spain. Participants completed measures of academic self-efficacy, environmental support, goal progress, academic satisfaction and stress, trait positive affect, and overall life satisfaction. A path analysis indicated that the model fit the data well and accounted for substantial portions of the variance in academic domain satisfaction, academic stress, and life satisfaction, though a few path coefficients (e.g., from positive affect and environmental support to academic stress) were nonsignificant. We consider the findings in relation to prior tests of the well-being model and discuss implications for practice and future research.

This study deals with forecasting economic time series that have strong trends and seasonal patterns. How to best model and forecast these patterns has been a long-standing issue of time series analysis. In this work, we propose a Holt-Winters Exponential Smoothing approach to time series forecasting in order to increase the chance of capturing different patterns in the data and thus improve forecasting performance. Therefore, the main propose of this study is to compare the accuracy of Holt-Winters models (additive and multiplicative) for forecasting and to bring new insights about the methods used via this approach. These methods are chosen because of their ability to model trend and seasonal fluctuations present in economic data. The models are fitted to time series of e-commerce retail sales in Portugal. Finally, a comparison is made and discussed.

This study tested the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) in conjunction with two sets of variables from the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA) and the Subjective Exercise Experience Scale (SEES) to predict exercise behaviour. This study included 454 participants who exercised in a fitness centre. We collected measures of the TPB (attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, and intention), HAPA (planning), and SEE (positive well-being, psychological distress, and fatigue) and assessed exercise behaviour at a three-month follow-up. Structural equation modelling found partial support for the TPB model (explaining 10% of the variance in exercise behaviour) and adequate fit indices for an adjusted model of the TPB that includes a positive well-being dimension (explaining 11% of the variance in exercise behaviour). In sum, the original TPB partially predicts exercise behaviour; when considered together with other predictors, limited evidence was found for its utility in explaining exercise behaviour.

Lent and Brown's (2006, 2008) social cognitive model of work well-being was tested in two samples of African college students, one from Angola ( N = 241) and one from Mozambique ( N = 425). Participants completed domain-specific measures of academic self-efficacy, environmental support, goal progress, and satisfaction, along with measures of global positive affect and life satisfaction. Path analyses indicated that the model fit the data well overall, both in the full sample and in separate sub-samples by country and gender. Contrary to expectations, however, self-efficacy predicted academic satisfaction only indirectly, via goal progress; and goal progress predicted life satisfaction only indirectly, via academic satisfaction. The predictors accounted for substantial portions of the variance in both academic domain satisfaction and life satisfaction. Implications for research and practice involving the social cognitive model are considered.