An ordinal multi-criteria decision-making procedure under imprecise linguistic assessments

Producción CientíficaMany decision-making problems such as quality control analysis, market surveys or sensory analysis require ordered qualitative scales, rather than numerical ones. It is very common to assign some cardinal mathematical objects, such as numerical values, intervals of real numbers or fuzzy numbers, to the linguistic terms of ordered qualitative scales. However, when agents perceive that the psychological proximity between each pair of consecutive terms of the scale is not identical, these conversions are meaningless and an ordinal approach to deal with these non-uniform ordered qualitative scales is more appropriate. The aim of this paper is to introduce an ordinal multi-criteria decision-making procedure for ranking alternatives in the setting of ordered qualitative scales that are nonnecessarily uniform. The possibility of doubt is also considered, by allowing agents to assign two consecutive terms of the scale when they hesitate. The proposed procedure is applied to a real case study in which nine experts assessed eight wines regarding different criteria.Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (project ECO2016-77900-P )European Regional Development Fund (ERDF

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

The Preventive Pedagogy of Saint Ludovico Pavoni

Saint Ludovico Pavoni was born in Brescia (Italy) in 1784 and died in Saiano (Brescia) in 1849. He dedicated his life to the training of young people and children through the workshops and a characteristic educational method. Priest, man of God, apostle of the world of work, pioneer of vocational training even before John Bosco, father of orphans and deaf mutes, and forerunner of the Catholic publishing house. In 1847, he founded the Congregation of the Sons of Mary Immaculate (Pavonians). In 1821, he gave rise to the Institute of San Bernabé, a ‘School of Crafts’, so that “the homeless and the most neglected by the parents themselves, find a free shelter and they will surely grow up educated in the honorable arts”. For 30 years, Pavoni would direct this Institute by directing the educational method and the workshops (typography, forge, binding...), for the results obtained, and for prevention and treatment of situations that were, in the 19th century, true social scourges. Here, Pavoni developed his own method, being at the forefront of pedagogues of the 19th century, a method based on the love for kids, rationality, the importance of work, emulation and honour, prevention and the gospel. Even now, the Pavonian family continues to work on Pavoni’s tracks.Pedagogia prewencyjna świętego Ludwika PavoniŚw. Ludwik Pavoni urodził się w Brescii (Włochy) w 1784 roku i zmarł w Saiano (Brescia) w 1849 roku. Swoje życie poświęcił wychowaniu młodzieży i dzieci poprzez warsztaty i specyficzną metodę edukacyjną. Kapłan, człowiek Boży, apostoł świata pracy, pionier nauczania zawodowego wyprzedzający w tym obszarze Jana Bosco, ojciec sierot i głuchoniemych, założyciel katolickiego wydawnictwa. W 1847 r. założył Zgromadzenie Synów Maryi Niepokalanej (pawonianie). W 1821 r. dał początek Instytutowi Świętego Barnaby, „Szkole Rzemiosła”, tak aby „bezdomni i najbardziej zaniedbywani przez samych rodziców znaleźli schronienie i dorastali kształceni w szlachetnych sztukach”. Przez 30 lat Pavoni będzie kierować tym instytutem, wskazując metody edukacyjne oraz warsztaty (typografia, kuźnia, wiązanie...), dla uzyskania pożądanych wyników oraz zapobiegania i leczenia sytuacji, które w XIX wieku stanowiły prawdziwe plagi społeczne. Tutaj Pavoni opracował własną metodę, stając na czele pedagogów w XIX wieku, metodę opartą na miłości do dzieci, racjonalności, znaczeniu pracy, naśladowaniu i honorze, zapobieganiu i Ewangelii. Również współcześnie pawonianie wykorzystują ścieżki wyznaczone przez św. Ludwika Pavoni

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

Infecciones más comunes en el paciente trasplantado

Organ transplantation has become one of the most important areas of medical research and, at present, is still the only therapeutical tool for several diseases. However, there are a number of factors related to transplantation, like immunosuppression and prolonged neutropenia that affect the incidence of infection. These infections are somehow peculiar to trasplant recipients. In fact, there are infectious diseases that only occur in immunodepression situations and, moreover, clinical expression of these infectious diseases can be quite different from that in immunocompetent patients. Besides these aspects, some infections, due to the high prevalence described, must be considered for prevention strategies because they continue to be a principal cause of morbidity and mortality, either due to direct effects or to their implication in the pathogenesis of rejection. These strategies commence before trasplantation by active immunization through vaccine administration to the patient and to people in the milieu and continue after trasplantation with prophylaxis or pre-emptive therapy. The importance of infectious diseases in the evolution and prognosis of trasplant recipients gives a special meaning to the understanding of associated infections, their clinical expression and ways of prevention and treatment

Tratamiento ordinal de las escalas cualitativas utilizadas por el Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas

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.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