Academic research output on social capital: a bibliometric and visualization analysis

PurposeThis study describes and analyzes the output of academic research on the topic of social capital. The concept of social capital has attracted the interest of scholars from a range of academic disciplines, and it has been applied to explain a variety of phenomena.Design/methodology/approachUsing the bibliographic approach, I analyzed aggregate data obtained from the Web of Science database. The analyses were carried out using VOSviewer software.FindingsThe results show social capital to be a topic of interest in multiple fields of academic research. The findings highlight the important role that journals, including those from disciplines other than the social sciences, have played in divulging this concept, and show that some countries and institutions are more productive and engage in more collaborative research efforts than others.Research limitations/implicationsThe main implications of this study regard research on social capital. The results demonstrate how social capital continues to interest scholars from a variety of academic disciplines. Future bibliometric research should include other sources (literature databases) and be expanded to consider other types of publication.Originality/valueThis paper furthers previous research by exclusively focusing on the concept of social capital. It analyzes the international trend in publications up until the end of 2021, thus expanding the publication period considered in previous studies. The results of this study highlight the relevance of bibliometric tools for assessing research performance

Social Robots in the Home: What Factors Influence Attitudes Towards their Use in Assistive Care?

Advances in technology and science have led to the application of artificial intelligence in many different areas of life. In particular, they have led to the appearance of robots in the domestic sphere. One type of robot – namely, the social robot – has been endowed with a very human aesthetic and is designed to interact with humans, and it is increasingly being used to perform “human tasks”. Social robots have also been introduced into the social services, providing companionship and assistive services for children, the infirm and the elderly. Such usage has rightly attracted the interest of the social sciences, fuelling the debate about the acceptance of social robots by their end-users. In this paper, regression analysis is applied to data from the Eurobarometer survey to investigate how socio-demographic features and self-confidence on technological development influence European citizens’ attitudes towards robots in the social services. The results show that men, with a high level of education, living in a big city and with experience of robot use have more positive attitudes towards the concept of robots for assistive services. This study emphasizes the need to consider the relation between attitudes towards social robots and their use to avoid the generation of social inequalities

People's Attitudes Towards the Use of Robots in the Social Services: A Multilevel Analysis Using Eurobarometer Data

Robots have been employed in the industrial sectors for over half a century; however, their appearance in the domestic sphere is a modern phenomenon, occurring in just the last decade. These so-called social robots are carrying out a variety of tasks traditionally carried out by humans, and in contexts in which they must interact with human beings. These kinds of social robots are now being used in the welfare services, providing assistive services and companionship for the infirm or elderly, and even children. Thus, the use of social robots in everyday life has triggered an animated debate about the acceptance of these devices by their end users. In this paper, multilevel analysis is applied using data from the Eurobarometer survey (sample size 27,901, covering 28 countries) to investigate how socio-demographic characteristics and country-level indicators of technological and economic development (the rate of high-technology manufactured exports, the cellular phone subscriptions rate and GDP) influence how robots are accepted in the realm of the social services. The results show that only individual (socio-demographic) and technology acceptance model (TAM) factors influence attitudes towards social robots. The effects of the contextual variables considered were not statistically strong enough to explain the attitudes towards social robots for social services

From Robots to Social Robots. Trends, Representation and Facebook Engagement of Robot-Related News Stories Published by Italian Online News Media

In recent decades, robots, social robots and artificial intelligence have increasingly entered daily life, affirming their presence not only in traditional spheres such as industrial production, but also gaining access to social reproduction, expressive functions and domestic activities. Considering the social relevance robots have now acquired, this essay aims at investigating their cultural representations in Italian online news media. More specifically, the study investigates trends of robot-related topics in online newspaper coverage and Facebook engagement over time, and analyzes news topics through text mining techniques. The study relies on a dataset of about 3,000 news stories published between 2014 and 2018 by some 100 different Italian news media. Results show a constant increase in news relating to robots, a major interest in work issues and a thematic shift over time: more recent topics describe the socialreproduction functions of robots. Finally, some suggestions for future research are outlined

Estudo das propriedades mecânicas de vigas de madeira maciça armadas com barras de aço CA-50 fixadas com resina epoxílica

Artigo submetido ao Curso de Engenharia Civil da UNESC - como requisito parcial para obtenção do Título de Engenheiro Civil.A madeira é um recurso muito utilizado na construção civil, e quando como elemento estrutural, tem-se como agravante, que seria o grande deslocamento vertical que sofre quando submetida à aplicação de cargas, prejudicando muito a resistência da mesma. Desse modo, no presente trabalho desenvolveu-se um sistema de reforço para essas vigas através da colagem de barras de aço CA-50 com uma resina epoxilica em vigas de Eucalyptus Citriodora. As barras foram coladas próximo às extremidades, com a finalidade de reduzir esse deslocamento, tornando-a mais rígida e, consequentemente, diminuindo a perda de resistência em função da deformação. Utilizou-se dois tipos de vigas para efeito de comparação, vigas de madeira maciça e madeira armada, tendo como resultado a comparação das propriedades mecânicas. Foram realizados os ensaios de umidade, resistência à flexão estática em quatro pontos e ensaio de aderência entre resina/madeira e resina/aço, para verificar a eficácia das vigas armadas e compará-las com vigas de referência. Após obtidos os resultados, chegou-se à conclusão que as vigas armadas possuem um ganho de resistência média de 68,51% em comparação às vigas de madeira maciça. Também foram acompanhados os comportamentos dos diversos elementos envolvidos nos ensaios

A Synthetic Indicator Method Applied to Putnam\u2019s Social Capital Indicators: The Case of Italy

In his 1993 book titled Making Democracy Work, R. D. Putnam (1993) paved the way for many studies on the distribution of social capital in the different Italian regions. Moreover, he introduced the use of some \u2018specific\u2019 indicators to measure social capital considered as civicness, which have \u2018systematically\u2019 been adopted in subsequent investigations. In the present essay, the synthetic indicator method, which was designed by Pena (1977; 2009), was applied to the data collected by other scholars (specifically, Cartocci, 2007; Bordandini, Cartocci, 2014; Vanelli, Cartocci, 2015) who replicated Putnam\u2019s research (1993), in order to create a synthetic indicator of social capital. This \u2018methodological experiment\u2019 confirms that, in the northern part of Italy, civicness is more widespread than in the South. Furthermore, it proves that voluntary activities and blood donation actions have a major impact on social capital indicators

Estudo sobre o efeito da cotação de preços de insumos materiais nos orçamentos realizados com base de referência SINAPI: tipologia R4-2B e R8-2N

Artigo submetido ao Curso de Engenharia Civil da UNESC - como requisito parcial para obtenção do Título de Engenheiro Civil.Quando não se tem disponível, em determinada empresa, um banco de dados de materiais e preços coletados no mercado para serem utilizados em determinado orçamento, visando obter uma maior confiabilidade nos resultados, adota-se a consulta nos referenciais de preços unitários publicados. Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo geral estudar o efeito da cotação dos preços de insumos obtidos no município de Criciúma-SC, nos orçamentos realizados com base na referência do SINAPI. Para este estudo se considerou as tipologias R4-2B e R8-2N, respectivos projetos e tabelas de serviços disponibilizados pela Caixa Econômica Federal. Aplicou-se para o cálculo dos custos diretos orçados os preços do Sinapi de março/2016 e os preços de insumos coletados no mercado no mesmo mês. A pesquisa identificou as variações entre os preços unitários de insumos coletados na região e o referencial Sinapi, bem como a influência desta variação nos orçamentos de custos diretos de materiais para cada insumo. Os resultados demonstram que para as duas tipologias os custos diretos totais orçados com os preços de insumos coletados no mercado são inferiores aos custos diretos orçados utilizando-se o Sinapi, sendo esta diferença de -10,07% para a tipologia R4-2B e de -9,11% para a tipologia R8-2N, quando considerados os preços mínimos de mercado. Quando considerado preços médios de mercado estas diferenças são: -7,69% para a tipologia R4-2B e -6,55% para a tipologia R8-2N

Regional Welfare Systems in Italy: a Cluster Analysis.

The reforms of welfare systems, which happened in different countries, have generated more differences at the local authority, thus the improvement of welfare organization has followed specific development methods providing different services for the citizenship living in the same country. The welfare classification research at cross-national level have not considered the heterogeneity of national welfare system, as underlined by Bertin\u2019s (2012b) research, based on an Italian case study, which identified that the Italian welfare system could be classify in seven different welfare regimes. Thus, this analysis, using the same data of Bertin\u2019s (2012b) analysis and applying a different cluster analysis method (K-mean), attempts to confirm the Bertin\u2019s (2012b) classification. The results corroborate some models of welfare systems identified by previous research but other cluster groups suggest that it is useful to conduct deep analysis in order to distinguish some more welfare system features

Surveys on Household Consumption: An Overview of the Most Common Surveys

This paper presents an overview of some of the most common surveys of household consumption

Economic situation of families and perception of social reality. Exploratory analysis of Italian families

The economic situation of a family is an aspect that has a great influence on lifestyle and the way that the membersof a household perceive social reality. Starting from an analysis of the economic situation of Italian families, this studyfocuses on the way that their members perceive certain elements of the social reality that they are part of, their futureprospects and those of new generations. The application of correspondence analysis makes it possible to conductsimultaneous analysis of data regarding the social, economic and socio-demographic characteristics of families andtheir future aspirations and prospects within welfare systems. The results of the research, conducted usingEurobarometer data, confirm that socio-economic conditions have a significant influence on reading the relevant socialreality through the level of institutional and interpersonal trust. Families show different levels of expectations withregard to the State and the market depending on their corresponding social profile