Chapter Economic inequality in preindustrial Europe, 1300-1800: methods and results from the EINITE project

This article provides an overview of the research done in recent years by the ERC-funded projects EINITE-Economic Inequality across Italy and Europe 1300-1800, and SMITE-Social Mobility and Inequality across Italy and Europe 1300-1800. It begins by discussing the sources available for reconstructing preindustrial economic inequality, especially in Italy, then it provides an overview of the methods which have been developed to produce reliable and homogenous information about inequality levels and trends. The method developed by EINITE to produce measures or distributions representative of broader aggregates (regions or entire states) is also discussed, as well as the techniques that can be employed to explore in a meaningful way such distributions to answer relevant historical questions

Occupation-Based Measures: an Overview and Discussion

Berufsbezogene Angaben gehören zu den vielseitigsten personenbezogenen Informationen, die in quantitativen Datensätzen zur Verfügung stehen. Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, einen thematisch möglichst umfassenden Überblick über berufsbasierte Skalen und Instrumente zu geben. Im Mittelpunkt der Ausführungen stehen nicht nur die weit verbreiteten berufsbasierten Instrumente zur Analyse sozialer Schichtung, wie z. B. Prestigeskalen, sozioökonomische Indizes oder Klassenschemata, sondern wir behandeln auch Instrumente zur Erhebung beruflicher Tätigkeitsinhalte sowie Indikatoren zur Erfassung berufsspezifischer Gesundheitsrisiken, beruflicher Geschlechtersegregation oder beruflicher Schließung. Da die Qualität und Aussagekraft solcher Maßzahlen auch von der Qualität und Art der zugrunde liegenden Berufsinformationen abhängt, geben wir außerdem einen Überblick darüber, wie Berufe in Umfragen erfasst und codiert werden und welche Berufsklassifikationen dabei typischerweise zum Einsatz kommen. Wir hoffen, dadurch das Bewusstsein unserer Leserinnen und Leser für das Potenzial berufsbezogener Analysen zu schärfen sowie ihr Wissen über den richtigen Umgang mit berufsbasierten Skalen bei der Anwendung in empirischen Forschungsprojekten zu erhöhen.Occupational information is among the most versatile categories of information about a person available in quantitative data. The goal of this paper is to provide an overview of occupation-based measures in different topic areas. These include not only measures for analyzing social stratification, such as prestige scales, socioeconomic indices and class schemes but also measures of workplace tasks, occupation-specific health risks, gender segregation, and occupational closure. Moreover, as the quality of such data depends on the quality of the underlying occupational information, we also provide an overview of how to collect occupational information in surveys, how to code this information, and how occupational classifications are commonly used. By doing so, we hope to increase researchers’ awareness of the potential of occupation-based analyses, as well as their knowledge of how to properly handle such measures in empirical analyses

Assessing the outcomes of a clinical trial: Primary outcome measures only tell part of the story

Identifying outcome measures that are sensitive to change and meaningful to participants is a challenge when designing clinical trials of complex communication interventions. Outcome measures encompassing participants’ perceptions of clinically meaningful change and their experience of the treatment process are frequently neglected. This paper presents an overview of the outcome measures used in a 3 arm clinical trial which aimed to investigate (i) social skills training for the person with TBI alone (which we have termed the TBI SOLO condition) and (ii) training communication partners to deal with difficult communication behaviors (the JOINT condition) compared to a delayed waitlist CONTROL condition. The paper asks two research questions: 1. What information did the self-report of perceived communication ability using the La Trobe Communication Questionnaire, and qualitative measures provide in addition to blinded ratings on the Adapted Kagan Scales, the primary outcome measure? 2.How did participants perceive the training experience as measured through post treatment interviews

Impact measures for libraries and information services

PURPOSE - To demonstrate the importance of impact / outcome research in libraries. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH - The paper gives an overview of purposes and methods used in impact research and illustrates this through project experiences. FINDINGS - Various projects worldwide are trying to prove that use of library services can positively influence skills and competences, attitudes and behaviour of users. The benefits that users experience by using library services can be assessed in terms of knowledge gained, higher information literacy, higher academic or professional success, social inclusion, and increase in individual well-being. RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS - The main problem of impact research is, that influences on an individual are manifold and that therefore it is difficult to trace changes and improvements back to the library. The paper shows methods that are tested and used at the present. More investigation is needed to identify methods that could be used to show a library’s overall impact or to develop measures that would permit benchmarking between institutions. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS - The paper shows practical examples of impact assessment, covering “soft” methods like surveys, interviews, focus groups, observation and quantitative methods like tests, analysis of publications, or usage data. ORIGINALITY/VALUE - The paper acquaints libraries with a topic that is not yet well known and, by showing practical examples, demonstrates how libraries can attempt to assess their impact

Using Social Emotional Data for School Improvement: A Case Study of Goochland County\u27s Use of the Gallup Student Poll

This case study presents a profile of a school division, Goochland County Public Schools in Virginia, that has not only recognized the value of measuring student social emotional development, but has become a regional leader in the effective use of student social emotional measures for guiding practice as well as broader school improvement processes. The case study, which focuses on Goochland County\u27s use of data from the Gallup Student Poll (GSP) over the past several years, is based on a series of interviews with principals and school leaders conducted during the spring of 2015. The case study includes an overview of the GSP, information about the initiation of the GSP in Goochland county,and then explores how this survey has impacted the county\u27s work with students, how it has supported their 2014-2020 strategic plan, and what future directions they see for use of this data. The purpose of this case study is to share Goochland\u27s story as a way of exploring how social emotional measures can be used in meaningful ways to impact educational processes and ultimately student learning and success

MENTAL HEALTH AMID COVID-19 PANDEMIC: APPROPRIATE COPING STRATEGIES

COVID-19 is a global public health crisis, and is turning to be a major mental health problem. This review provides a broad overview of mental health situations during COVID-19 pandemic in Africa and globally, while some preventive methods to improve mental health conditions during the pandemic were provided. In the Africa context, various government authorities must ensure the provision and accessibility to mental health care services such as routine preventive information, mental health counseling and self help measures, and social supports such as palliatives, basic needs and special financial assistance to the public during the pandemic. Generally, coping strategies such as personal care-based measures (adequate nutrition, personal hygiene, adequate sleep and rest) activity-based measures (regular physical exercise, learning new tasks and engaging in novel adventures and mindfulness meditation) and behavioral-based measures (avoidance of psychoactive substances, taking breaks from COVID-19-related information, social connectedness and showing supports to others, setting achievable targets, help seeking measures and psychiatrist’s visitations, adherence to all COVID-19 preventive measures and uptake of the COVID-19 vaccines) are all viable preventive methods against mental health conditions during the pandemic globally. It is recommended that researchers should conduct more studies on the impacts of COVID-19 on mental health status in Africa populations to ensure a valid basis for proper interventions during and post pandemic era. Also, African countries should seek supports and routine guidance from appropriate international health organizations to ensure an updated and frequent mental health care delivery to the public

Results from a German terminology mapping effort: intra- and interdisciplinary cross-concordances between controlled vocabularies

In 2004, the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research funded a major terminology mapping initiative at the GESIS Social Science Information Centre in Bonn (GESIS-IZ), which will find its conclusion this year. The task of this terminology mapping initiative was to organize, create and manage ‘crossconcordances’ between major controlled vocabularies (thesauri, classification systems, subject heading lists) centred around the social sciences but quickly extending to other subject areas. This project is the largest terminology mapping effort in Germany. The number and variety of controlled vocabularies targeted provide an optimal basis for insights and further research opportunities. To our knowledge, terminology mapping efforts have rarely been evaluated with stringent qualitative and quantitative measures. This research should contribute in this area. For the NKOS workshop, we plan to present an overview of the project and participating vocabularies, an introduction to the heterogeneity service and its application as well as some of the results and findings of the evaluation, which will be concluded in August

An Evaluation of the Performances of Equity Measures

The issue of equity in transport have received extensive attention, especially more recently related to congestion pricing. This body of research has different focus. Some address the distributions of economic gains and losses among different groups of users, usually by income, and suggests how to calculate these. Others have focused on alternative schemes for redistribution of the toll revenues in order to address equity concerns. And some have focused on the identification of different stakeholders such as consumers, producers and operators, and subgroups among stakeholders that are affected differently by a policy. See Eliasson and Lundberg (2002) for a survey. A few studies address the quantification of inequality formally. Among these the EU funded research projects AFFORD, MC-ICAM and PROSPECTS (see Fridstrøm, et al 2000; Minken et al, 2002; MC-ICAM, 2003). There are two alternative approaches available to respond to equity considerations. One approach is to directly respond to the distributional concerns by adopting an explicit form of social welfare function and the choice of a desired inequality aversion parameter. The second approach is to apply an inequality measures for the comparison of inequality of a given pair of distributions of a variable that changes as the result of a policy, such as income, accessibility, etc. The equity implications are evaluated by the latter approach in a partial equilibrium model of transport. The main purpose of this paper is to illustrate some of the challenges that arise in addressing efficiency and equity of a package of instruments with a partial equilibrium model of transport model. The paper provides an overview of some equity measures and their properties. The performances of these equity measures are evaluated in the case of a road-pricing scheme for Oslo. This paper shows that equity and accessibility measures can only provide information about the potential distribution of welfare among a population or over a geographical area. The sizes of the equity measures are quite sensitive to the level of spatial disaggregation and to the scale and translation in the measure of welfare. While it should in many cases be possible to pass judgment on which one of a set of alternatives is the most equitable, relating the equity objective to a predefined value of any of these measures is not a desirable approach. Furthermore it is difficult to make a judgement about the equity implication of a policy on the basis of a single measure and without a thorough examination of several measures.

Results from a German terminology mapping effort: intra- and interdisciplinary cross-concordances between controlled vocabularies

In 2004, the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research funded a major terminology mapping initiative at the GESIS Social Science Information Centre in Bonn (GESIS-IZ), which will find its conclusion this year. The task of this terminology mapping initiative was to organize, create and manage ‘crossconcordances’ between major controlled vocabularies (thesauri, classification systems, subject heading lists) centred around the social sciences but quickly extending to other subject areas. This project is the largest terminology mapping effort in Germany. The number and variety of controlled vocabularies targeted provide an optimal basis for insights and further research opportunities. To our knowledge, terminology mapping efforts have rarely been evaluated with stringent qualitative and quantitative measures. This research should contribute in this area. For the NKOS workshop, we plan to present an overview of the project and participating vocabularies, an introduction to the heterogeneity service and its application as well as some of the results and findings of the evaluation, which will be concluded in August