Managing the Smiley Face Scale Used by Booking.com in an Ordinal Way

Producción CientíficaUser reviews are a new source of information in the hospitality and tourism sector. Usually, these reviews contain comments of users and assessments expressed through ordered qualitative scales. The website Booking.com uses a smiley face scale to ask users the degree of satisfaction regarding several aspects of accommodations. The scoring system of the website assigns numerical values to each item of the smiley face scale. However, when users perceive different proximities between pairs of items of an ordered qualitative scale, these numerical codifications are because they may misrepresent the original ordinal information. In this paper, we analyze the drawbacks and limitations of the scoring system of Booking.com and we manage its smiley face scale through a purely ordinal procedure. This procedure avoids assigning numerical codifications to items of scales and it takes into account how users perceive the proximities between pairs of items. The findings show the importance of considering how users understand qualitative scales when they face subjective assessments through ordered qualitative scales

Physical and Motor Fitness Tests for Older Adults Living in Nursing Homes: A Systematic Review

Abstract: This systematic review aimed to identify the physical/motor fitness tests for nursing home residents and to examine their psychometric properties. Electronic databases were searched for articles published between January 2005 and October 2021 using MeSh terms and relevant keywords. Of the total of 4196 studies identified, 3914 were excluded based on title, abstracts, or because they were duplicates. The remaining 282 studies were full-text analyzed, and 41 were excluded, resulting in 241 studies included in the review. The most common physical component assessed was muscle strength; 174 (72.2%) studies assessed this component. Balance (138 studies, 57.3%) and agility (102 studies, 42.3%) were the second and third components, respectively, most widely assessed. In this review, we also describe the most used assessment tests for each physical/motor component. Some potentially relevant components such as manual dexterity and proprioception have been little considered. There are few studies assessing the psychometric properties of the tests for nursing home residents, although the data show that, in general, they are reliable. This review provides valuable information to researchers and health-care professionals regarding the physical/motor tests used in nursing home residences, helping them select the screening tools that could most closely fit their study objectives

Metrizable ordinal proximity measures and their aggregation

Producción CientíficaOrdered qualitative scales formed by linguistic terms are frequently used for evaluating sets of alternatives in different decision-making problems. These scales are usually implicitly considered as uniform in the sense that the psychological proximity between consecutive terms is perceived as identical. However, sometimes agents can perceive different proximities between the linguistic terms of the scale, and an appropriate method is required for aggregating these perceptions. In this paper we introduce the notion of metrizable ordinal proximity measure, discuss some aggregation procedures and propose a method based on metrics for aggregating experts’ opinions on proximities between linguistic terms on ordered qualitative scales.Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Project ECO2016-77900-P

Evolución de la victimización y la tolerancia ante la violencia en el noviazgo de mujeres adolescentes españolas. Un estudio de cohortes

La violencia contra la mujer es un problema social que ha pasado en pocos años de ser considerado una cuestión perteneciente a la intimidad de la pareja a ganar gran presencia y centralidad en las políticas sociales y sanitarias españolas. Este cambio se ha reflejado en la aparición de programas de prevención, dirigidos a dotar a la población adolescente y juvenil de herramientas para la detección temprana de la violencia en las primeras relaciones de noviazgo. El presente texto compara los datos de victimización sufrida y de tolerancia ante la violencia de dos grupos de 257 y 342 mujeres escolarizadas adolescentes (X=16,6 años, DT=1,14 años), evaluadas en 2001 y 2010, respectivamente, utilizando el Cuestionario de Violencia de Novios (CUVINO) como herramienta de evaluación. Los datos extraídos mostraron niveles estadísticamente similares en la victimización de ambos grupos. Sin embargo, los niveles de tolerancia asociados a los abusos dentro de la pareja mostraron cambios en los 8 factores recogidos por el CUVINO, con una molestia media inferior en el grupo de mujeres más reciente. Aunque las conclusiones extraídas quedan limitadas por el tamaño y selección de las muestras, estos resultados representan una llamada de atención hacia la necesidad de evaluar el impacto y utilidad de los esfuerzos preventivos llevados a cabo con jóvenes

On the relationship between Ethics and Economics

New Welfare Economics and Social Choice Theory have given rise to a group of problems which lie on the frontier between Economic Theory and Ethics. The attempts to deal with these problems have generated a literature known as «on Ethics and Economics». The analytical developments of concepts like utility, preferences or well-being and notions like meta-preferences, agency or commitment (Sen) all connect directly to the ethical dimension that any Theory of Value presupposes. In relation with the Theory of Choice, concepts like rationality, consistent election and selfinterest impede the accommodation of behaviors like altruism or others whose consequences do not affect directly to the acting agent. The perceived difficulty to link ethical aspects of actions with standard Economic Theory allows us to qualify the relationship between Economics and Ethics as one of mere juxtaposition

Ordinal treatment of qualitative scales used by the Center for Sociological Research

Las escalas cualitativas formadas por términos lingüísticos son utilizadas por diversas disciplinas para determinar preferencias y diversos aspectos de la vida de los individuos. Aunque es habitual asignar números a las categorías de respuesta de estas escalas, no es adecuado utilizar codificaciones numéricas cuando los individuos perciben proximidades psicológicas distintas entre las categorías consecutivas de la escala, es decir, cuando las escalas cualitativas no son uniformes. En este trabajo se propone un procedimiento ordinal para jerarquizar un conjunto de alternativas a partir de las valoraciones mostradas por un grupo de individuos mediante una escala cualitativa no necesariamente uniforme. Dicho procedimiento está basado en las proximidades ordinales entre las categorías de respuesta de las escalas. El procedimiento propuesto se ilustra con un ejemplo tomado del Barómetro del Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) de mayo de 2011.Qualitative scales formed by linguistic terms are used by different disciplines to determine preferences and different aspects of individuals¿ lives. Although it is usual to assign numbers to the response categories of scales, it is not suitable when individuals perceive different proximities between the consecutive categories of the scale, that is, when scales are not uniform. In this paper, an ordinal procedure is proposed to order a set of alternatives from the assessments given by a group of individuals through a qualitative scale not necessarily uniform. This procedure is based on ordinal proximities between the response categories of scales. The proposed procedure is illustrated with an example taken from the Barometer of the Center for Sociological Research of May 2011.Universidad Pablo de Olavid

Generalized erythematous scaly rash after glucocorticoids

A 65-years-old woman with a medical history of idiopathic throm- bocytopenic purpura and psoriasis in treatment with topical glucocor- ticoids presented with a three-month history of burning, generalized erythematous, scaly rash, and chills. A few weeks before the rash, the patient presented petechiae on her thighs due to a low platelet count (28.000 platelets per microliter), for which she started treatment with prednisone 25 mg/week. The rash was initially treated with topical ointments including clobetasol, urea, salicylic acid, ammonium lactate, and propylene glycol without improvement. The physical examination showed generalized erythroderma (Fig. 1A) from neck to feet (Fig. 1B), with thick silvery desquamation respecting the face and back of the legs (Fig. 1C), involving more than 90% of the patient’s body surface area and erythematous scaly plaques on the scalp. Laboratory test results were normal. A punch biopsy specimen obtained from an arm area showed increased keratinization at the level of the corneal layer with compact parakeratosis with abundant polymorphonuclear cells. The epidermis presented psoriasiform hyperplasia with significant spongio- sis. What is the diagnosis