Alcohol use, psychological distress, and subjective well-being among young adult university students: A cross-national study between Serbia and Italy.

Few studies have cross-nationally tested the mediators of the relationship between alcohol use and subjective well-being among university students. This study examined how self-reported psychological distress symptoms mediate the association between alcohol use (drinking frequency and binge-drinking frequency) and subjective well-being among 637 Serbian and 705 Italian university students. Psychological distress mediated the negative relationship between binge-drinking frequency and subjective well-being among Serbians (partial mediation) and Italians (full mediation). Drinking frequency was not associated with psychological distress or subjective well-being. Binge drinking may negatively affect subjective well-being among university students by enhancing symptoms of psychological distress.

Testing multidimensional well-being among university community samples in Italy and Serbia.

Today well-being attracts the attention of public health professionals who are looking to explore life satisfaction as a whole and its specific domains. In order to contribute in moving the measurement of subjective well-being from a primarily academic activity to the sphere of intervention, we need to assess tools to measure multidimensional well-being (MWB) adopting state-of-the-art statistical techniques. Through structural equation modelling our goal was to test a MWB model among Italian and Serbian university students and to further observe its relationships with measures of life goals' pursuing. This cross-sectional pilot study was conducted on a consecutive sample of 86 Italian (45% female; Mage = 24.20, SD = 2.02) and 83 Serbian (55% female; Mage = 23.52, SD = 2.48) university students. Participants filled in an anonymous questionnaire investigating: self-perceived MWB, standardized control measures of well-being (life satisfaction and eudaimonic well-being), and commitment and stress regarding personal goal pursuing. Results evidenced how Serbians reported higher scores on MWB and on control measures than Italians. Moreover, the most frequently reported goals were to complete studies, to obtain job position and to be healthy. Exploratory and multi-group confirmatory factor analyses yielded a one-factor solution of MWB across Italian and Serbian sub-groups. MWB resulted positively associated with standardized control measures in both national groups. The results support the strength of our MWB model applied to samples of young university students in Italy and Serbia. Based on such findings, future studies may adopt this instrument in larger populations of university students in these two countries.

Correlates of self-rated health in Southern Europe: evidences from national representative samples in Italy and Serbia.

Background: Self-rated health (SRH) is a widely adopted tool to compare health across countries. Our aim was to examine SRH differences between Italy and Serbia and to observe the role of predictors of SRH referring to health behaviors within and between both countries. Methods: We used cross-sectional population-based data from Italian and Serbian national health surveys carried out in 2013. Post hoc cross-standardization was undertaken to ensure that the information from both data sets was comparable. Results: Univariate and multivariate multinomial logistic regressions showed that Serbians reported bad-SRH significantly more often than Italians. Moreover, consistently across national groups, younger participants, males, higher educated participants and participants with lower body mass index (BMI) had more chances than older, lower educated and higher BMI participants, respectively, to report better SRH. Finally, smoking and drinking behaviors did not correlate with SRH, while the frequency of fruits and vegetables intake was differently associated with SRH across countries. Conclusion: Health assessments based on SRH in Italian and Serbian national surveys are directly comparable and show similar relationships with socio-demographic correlates and BMI. However, the effect of health behaviors on SRH may differ according to national and cultural contexts.