2.2.5. Italian Perceived Stress Scale (IPSS-10)

The Italian HCWs' perceived stress was measured using the IPSS-10 (Italian Perceived Stress Scale); it is the Italian version [91] of the PSS (Perceived stress scale). Although its original version consists of 14 items [92], the most commonly used is that consisting of 10 items [93,94]. PSS measures the degree to which situations in one's life are evaluated as stressful [95] (p. 1) by asking about feelings and thoughts during the last month. Respondents are asked how often they felt a certain way on a five-point Likert scale: 0 = Never; 1 = Almost Never; 2 = Sometimes; 3 = Fairly Often; 4 = Very Often. Cronbach's alpha was 0.881 and McDonald's omega 0.884.

### *2.3. Procedures*

In order to investigate the associations between personality traits, intolerance of uncertainty, coping strategies and perceived stress in a sample of Italian HCWs, also taking into account different situational contexts (i.e., having worked on the frontline or not), we


**Figure 1.** Path-diagram of the general model of structure of relations among variables.
