An application of multiobjetive programming to the study of workers' satisfaction in the spanish labour market

In this paper, a multiobjective scheme is used to study the satisfaction levels of the Spanish workers. Data obtained from a panel survey conducted in several European countries are used to build up a multiobjective model, on the basis of a previous statistical and econometric analysis of these data. Then, a Reference Point based method is implemented to determine the profile of the most satisfied worker in Spain nowadays. Finally, a combined Goal Programming – Reference Point approach is used to determine policies than can be carried out in order to increase the workers’ satisfaction levels.Workers’ Satisfaction, Econometric analyses, Multiobjective Programming.

Analysing efficiency and performance universities by combining composite indicators and data envelopment analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse universities by using a novel combination of methodologies, which allows the joint use of a multicriteria reference point technique and the data envelopment analysis from different compensatory scenarios. Therefore, all the aspects considered relevant for the assessment of university performance and efficiency are considered in the analysis. The findings of this research highlight the convenience to assess university performance by using both compensatory scenarios, allowing the decision maker to detect improvement areas, rather than just giving an overall performance measure. The analysis is illustrated using data of 47 Spanish public universities for the academic year 2016-2017. Specifically, the results show that 18 universities are efficient in the compensatory scenario, and 17 in the non-compensatory one, while only 14 are efficient in both scenarios. In general, most universities tend to be less inefficient when the overall performance is considered (21 out of 47).Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Evaluating university performance using reference point based composite indicators.

Política de acceso abierto tomada de: https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/id/publication/13967In this paper, we propose the application of a novel methodology to build composite indicators, in order to evaluate university performance. We analyse separately the three basic dimensions of our university system (research, teaching and technology transfer), because we are interested in getting a more accurate vision of each of them. In order to build the composite indicators, we use a multi-criteria analysis technique, based on the double reference point method. One advantage of this technique is the possibility to use reference levels, in such a way that the results obtained are easily interpreted in terms of the performance of the university with respect to these levels. Besides, aggregations for different compensation degrees are provided. In order to illustrate the advantages of this method, it has been applied to evaluate the performance of the public universities of the Spanish region of Andalucía, for year 2008. The results show that the performance of the Andalusian public universities in the teaching block is better than in the research and technology transfer blocks. The application lets us conclude that the methodology offers a warning system to assist in strategic decision making, and the values of the indicators allow us to find fields of improvement in all areas.We acknowledge the support received from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Project ECO2016-76567-C4-4-R), and from the Regional Government of Andalucía (research group SEJ-417)

Composite Indicators as Decision Making Tools: The Joint Use of Compensatory and Noncompensatory Schemes.

Política de cceso abierto tomada de: https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/id/publication/9692?template=romeoComposite indicators are powerful tools for summarizing, focusing and condensing the complexity of our dynamic environment, and their use has become indispensable for managing huge amounts of information. An important aspect to emphasize when constructing composite indicators is the compensatory character among the individual indicators. In general, a fully compensatory scheme provides an overall assessment of the performance of each unit, while a non-compensatory scheme detects the worst single performances. When used in a decision making framework, the joint consideration of both schemes may, therefore, be helpful. Nevertheless, in the literature, few approaches allow the construction of composite indicators for different compensation degrees. On these premises, the aim of this paper is to illustrate the behavior of some methodologies that build composite indicators allowing different compensation degrees. We analyze the results provided by each of these methods and which of them provide a more varied complementary information when considering both compensatory and non-compensatory scenarios. An illustrative example is used to visualize the results.The authors would like to thank the financial support received from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Project PID2019-104263RB-C42), from the Regional Government of Andalucía (research group SEJ-417), and from the FEDER-UMA Project UMA18-FEDERJA-065

MRP-WSCI: Multiple reference point based weak and strong composite indicators.

Política de acceso abierto tomada de: https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/id/publication/17106The construction of composite indicators is becoming an increasingly important way of managing great amounts of information obtained from multiple single indicators. Obviously, the aggregation of several indicators in a single synthetic measure always implies some loss of information on the way. For this reason, this aggregation must be done in the most informative possible way, so that the results obtained can be easily interpreted, and in an efficient way, so that the information contained in the composite indicator is maximal. In this paper, we propose a novel methodology based on the multicriteria reference point scheme. The decision maker can establish any number of reference levels for each indicator, and the final outcome can be interpreted in terms of the position with respect to these levels. Besides, two different aggregations are proposed: the weak indicator, allowing for full compensation among the single indicators, and the strong indicator, not allowing for any compensation. The joint visualization of both composite indicators provides valuable information that may be unnoticed using other existing approaches. The approach is illustrated using an example based on the EU-Regional Social Progress Index (EU-SPI).The authors would like to thank the financial support received from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Project ECO2016-76567-C4-4-R), and from the Regional Government of Andalucía (research group SEJ-417)

Multi-criteria techniques based proposals for the End of Childhood Index: reference levels and compensation issues.

Child well-being is a subject of paramount importance, since a careful analysis of all the aspects related to childhood may have a major impact on the society as a whole. In this paper, based on the End of Childhood Index, which is a fully compensatory composite indicator published annually by the international organisation Save the children, we analyse the added information that can be provided through the use of multi-criteria analysis techniques. On the one hand, rather than analysing the overall performance of the countries by the use of the fully compensatory scenario, we make use of the international reference levels and performance bands provided by Save the Children itself, allowing to measure the distance of each country with respect to these levels. Besides, the use of a non-compensatory scenario offers interesting insights about the possible imbalances of each country, which is helpful in decision making processes. First, based on the data of the last available year, 2021, an overview of the worldwide analysis and a further detailed single region analysis is carried out. Second, a dynamic analysis over a period of five years (2017-2021) is undertaken. In this line, in order to guide childhood decision makers towards the identification of possible opportunities for improvement and the implementation of the corresponding action plans, the multiple reference point technique makes it possible to analyse the compliance in each one of the indicators, based on the use of distance reference levels and the joint consideration of a fully and non-compensatory composite indicators.This research is part of the project PID2022-139543OB-C42 funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by ERDF/UE. Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Ma´laga / CBUA. The authors extend their appreciation to the Theme Net RED2022-134540-T

Una evaluación conjunta del rendimiento y eficiencia de las universidades públicas españolas.

Hoy en día, el uso de técnicas capaces de manejar las nuevas demandas del complejo entorno en el que se ven envueltas las instituciones de educación superior resulta altamente adecuado. En esta línea, se propone una combinación del método multicriterio MRP-WSCI con el análisis no paramétrico DEA para la evaluación del Sistema universitario público español. Esta combinación permite tener en cuenta como resultados todos los aspectos considerados relevantes para evaluar el desempeño universitario e incorporar los recursos, de distinta naturaleza, que utilizan las universidades. Para ilustrar esta combinación, se analizan las 47 universidades presenciales públicas españolas para el curso académico 2016-2017. Primero, la construcción de los indicadores compuestos MRP-WSCI se ha llevado a cabo en dos etapas (agregación de los indicadores individuales en los diferentes sub-bloques correspondientes, y luego agregación de los sub-bloques a las correspondientes misiones). En la primera etapa de agregación, dado que la información proporcionada por los indicadores individuales dentro de los correspondientes sub-bloques es homogénea, se permite una compensación completa entre ellos. En la segunda etapa, se proporcionan diferentes grados de compensación entre los sub-bloques (compensatorio y no compensatorio). Segundo, los indicadores compuestos MRP-WSCI son utilizados, a posteriori, como outputs en el análisis DEA. Cabe mencionar que la construcción de los indicadores compuestos se ha llevado a cabo en un entorno robusto con respecto a los pesos de los indicadores y sub-bloques. De esta manera, además de analizar el rendimiento de las universidades públicas españolas, desde los dos escenarios de compensación, mediante el método MRP-WSCI, también se lleva a cabo un doble análisis de eficiencia, en el que los indicadores de resultados (compensatorios y no compensatorios) son confrontados con los recursos disponibles por cada una de las universidades.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Relevance of gastrointestinal manifestations in a large Spanish cohort of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus: what do we know?

SLE can affect any part of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. GI symptoms are reported to occur in >50% of SLE patients. To describe the GI manifestations of SLE in the RELESSER (Registry of SLE Patients of the Spanish Society of Rheumatology) cohort and to determine whether these are associated with a more severe disease, damage accrual and a worse prognosis. METHODS: We conducted a nationwide, retrospective, multicentre, cross-sectional cohort study of 3658 SLE patients who fulfil =4 ACR-97 criteria. Data on demographics, disease characteristics, activity (SLEDAI-2K or BILAG), damage (SLICC/ACR/DI) and therapies were collected. Demographic and clinical characteristics were compared between lupus patients with and without GI damage to establish whether GI damage is associated with a more severe disease. RESULTS: From 3654 lupus patients, 3.7% developed GI damage. Patients in this group (group 1) were older, they had longer disease duration, and were more likely to have vasculitis, renal disease and serositis than patients without GI damage (group 2). Hospitalizations and mortality were significantly higher in group 1. Patients in group 1 had higher modified SDI (SLICC Damage Index). The presence of oral ulcers reduced the risk of developing damage in 33% of patients. CONCLUSION: Having GI damage is associated with a worse prognosis. Patients on a high dose of glucocorticoids are at higher risk of developing GI damage which reinforces the strategy of minimizing glucocorticoids. Oral ulcers appear to decrease the risk of GI damage. © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Rheumatology

Comparando métodos interactivos de optimización multiobjetivo con decisores humanos: Análisis empírico y conclusiones.

Para aplicar métodos interactivos de optimización multiobjetivo, es necesario interactuar con un decisor que exprese sus preferencias. Debido al papel activo del decisor en el proceso de resolución, comparar el funcionamiento práctico de distintos métodos interactivos no es algo fácil. Una buena comparativa debería poder analizar no sólo los aspectos computacionales de los métodos interactivos, sino también aspectos propios de la interacción humana. En este trabajo, proponemos un diseño experimental para comparar métodos interactivos de optimización multiobjetivo con decisores humanos. Utilizando un cuestionario novedoso, medimos la carga cognitiva de los decisores, su satisfacción con el proceso de resolución y con la solución final, y comparamos la capacidad de los métodos para reflejar las preferencias y su capacidad de respuesta a los cambios en las preferencias. Nuestro diseño experimental nos ha permitido comparar distintos métodos interactivos y llegar a ciertas conclusiones.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Sustainability of European agri-food supply chain using MRP-PCI multicriteria analysis method

Abstract The need for a more sustainable agri-food system is a topic that has attracted growing interest in recent years. Several international and European policies such as Agenda 2030 and the European Green Deal have been defined with the aim of making agri-food systems more sustainable at all stages of the supply chain, from production to consumption. Particularly, the European Union concentrates several policies on it. Therefore, the assessment of the level of sustainability among the states of the European Union is a key aspect to properly address and evaluate the implementation of these policies. The objective of this paper is to measure the sustainability of the global agri-food supply chain (AFSC) of the European Union countries through the application of a multi-criteria analysis. In particular, the method used is the Multiple Reference Point Partially Compensatory Indicator, which allows the creation of composite indicators using different levels of compensation across them. A set of 50 indicators, referred to 2011 and 2019, were built and then divided into the three basic dimensions of sustainability (economic, social and environmental), aggregated into the four main AFSC sectors (agriculture, food industry, distribution, and consumption) in order to obtain an overall sustainability index. Through such an index we provided a sustainability ranking for the EU countries, while the analysis of dimensions of each sector contributed to increase the knowledge about the supply chain that can be used by decision-makers. According to the results, Italy achieved the best level of sustainability of the AFSC with a value of 48.53, followed by Sweden, Austria, Spain, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Slovakia. In relation to the different sectors, the biggest problems were observed in the consumption sector, where most countries did not perform well, especially for the social dimension (e.g. excess of overweight and obese persons). In contrast, the performance of the agricultural sector was good, with few exceptions, showing a fair state of sustainability