Field rules and bias in random surveys with quota samples. An assessment of CIS surveys

Surveys applying quota sampling in their final step are widely used in opinion and market research all over the world. This is also the case in Spain, where the surveys carried out by CIS (a public institution for sociological research supported by the government) have become a point of reference. The rules used by CIS to select individuals within quotas, however, could be improved as they lead to biases in age distributions. Analysing more than 545,000 responses collected in the 220 monthly barometers conducted between 1997 and 2016 by CIS, we compare the empirical distributions of the barometers with the expected distributions from the sample design and/or target populations. Among other results, we find, as a consequence of the rules used, significant overrepresentations in the observed proportions of respondents with ages equal to the minimum and maximum of each quota (age and gender group). Furthermore, in line with previous literature, we also note a significant overrepresentation of ages ending in zero. After offering simple solutions to avoid all these biases, we discuss some of their consequences for modelling and inference and about limitations and potentialities of CIS data.Peer Reviewe

Influencia del árido y materiales cementantes suplementarios en las propiedades de los morteros de cal hidratada

Hydrated lime is a historic material currently used in conservation. It hardens slowly by carbonation slowing construction however, supplementary cementitious materials accelerate hardening enhancing strength. Hydrated-lime mortars with rice husk ash–RHA-; ground granulated blastfurnace slag–GGBS- and increasing amounts of two aggregates were studied. Increasing aggregate lowered strength as interfacial zones proliferate; it lowered hygric properties and raised water demand. Aggregate content/composition didn’t affect the high water retention. For the higher aggregate contents (90 days), limestone mortars are c.20% stronger than silica mortars while the (1:1) silica sand mortars are 56% stronger in flexion. Additions increased strength with little impact on hygric properties. GGBS increased strength c.six times. RHA increased strength with little impact on hygric properties due to its great specific surface and high water-demand increasing porosity. GGBS and RHA properties ruling hydrate production and the kinetics of the pozzolanic reaction are considered partially responsible for the mortar property variation.La cal hydratada es un material histórico que se usa en conservación. Endurece despacio por carbonatacion pero materiales cementantes suplementarios aceleran su endurecimiento. Se estudian morteros de cal con escoria granulada molida de alto horno (GGBS) y ceniza de cascara de arroz (RHA) con cantidades variables de dos tipos de árido. GGBS multiplicó por 6 la resistencia mecánica del mortero de cal. RHA afectó ligeramente las propiedades hídricas por su elevada superficie específica que incrementa el agua de mezclado aumentando la porosidad. El aumento de árido redujo la resistencia mecánica, trabajabilidad y propiedades hídricas del mortero. La cantidad/composición del árido no afectó la alta retención de agua. Los morteros de árido de caliza (2:1 y 3:1) incrementaron un 20% su resistencia a la compresión con respecto a los de arena de sílice mientras que la resistencia a la flexión de los arena de sílice (1:1) es 56% superior que sus equivalentes de caliza

Data wrangling, computational burden, automation, robustness and accuracy in ecological inference forecasting of R×C tables

Acknowledgments. The authors wish to thank Carolina Plescia for providing us with the electoral Scottish data handled in this paper and two anonymous reviewers and the editors for their really valuable comments and suggestions. We are grateful to M. Hodkinson for translating and revising the English of the paper and Priscila Espinosa for her tips about LATEX. This research has been supported by Conseller'ıa d'Innovacio, Universitats, Ciència i Societat Digital, Generalitat Valenciana [grant number AICO/2021/257] and by the Ministerio de Economía e Innovacion [grant number PID2021-128228NB-I00].This paper assesses the two current major alternatives for ecological inference, based on a multinomial-Dirichlet Bayesian model and on mathematical programming. Their performance is evaluated in a database made up of almost 2000 real datasets for which the actual cross-distributions are known. The analysis reveals both approaches as complementarity, each one of them performing better in a different area of the simplex space, although with Bayesian solutions deteriorating when the amount of information is scarce. After offering some guidelines regarding the appropriate contexts for employing each one of the algorithms, we conclude with some ideas for exploiting their complementarities

Dataset of the COVID-19 lockdown survey conducted by GIPEyOP in Spain

This article introduces a dataset that captures relevant in- formation about the living conditions, feelings, and habits of residents in Spain during ninety nine days of home confinement. This and other measures, imposed by the Government of Spain to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on the population, have brought with them important economic, labor, and social changes, which have been accompanied by various modifications (some only temporary) in Spaniards habits and behaviours. Data collection was carried out through the implementation of a questionnaire with 33 questions, which was sent by email to the collaborators of GIPEyOP (Elections and Public Opinion Research Group from the University of Valencia). These collaborators, in turn, forwarded the questionnaire to their acquaintances using email and social networks, mainly WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter. This non- probabilistic methodology has generated a total of 8387 valid responses. The resulting dataset may be (re)used by sociologists, political scientists, economists, or psychologists, among others, to identify how household chores were distributed among family members during the lockdown, what impact the confinement had on the labor performance of workers, the extent of teleworking and on some (physical and psychological) health issues linked to the confinement, including relationships with the place of residence during confinement. The data also provides information on how social networks spread geographically or what Spaniards thought of the management of the crisis by local, national, and international authorities

Introducing migratory flows in life table construction

The purpose of life tables is to describe the mortality behav iour of particular groups. The construction of general life tables is based on death statis tics and census figures of resident populations under the hypothesis of closed demographic sys tem. Among other assumptions, this hypothesis implicitly assumes that entries (immigrants) a nd exits (emigrants) of the population are usually not significant (being almost of the same magnitu de for each age compensating each other). This paper theoretically extends the classical sol ution to open demographic systems and studies the impact of this hypothesis in constructing a life table. In particular, using the data of residential variations made available to the public by the S panish National Statistical Office (INE, Instituto Nacional de Estad ́ ıstica) to approximate migratory flows, we introduce in the p rocess of constructing a life table these flows and compare, before and after graduation, the crude mortality rates and the adjusted death probabilities obtained when mi gratory flows are, and are not, taken into accountPeer Reviewe

Dasymetric distribution of votes in a dense city

[EN] A large proportion of electoral analyses using geography are performed on a small area basis, such as polling units. Unfortunately, polling units are frequently redrawn, provoking breaks in their data series. Previous electoral results play a key role in many analyses. They are used by political party workers and journalists to present quick assessments of outcomes, by political scientists and electoral geographers to perform detailed scrutinizes and by pollsters and forecasters to anticipate electoral results. In this paper, we study to what extent more complex geographical approaches (based on a proper location of electors on the territory using dasymetric techniques) are of value in comparison to simple methods (like areal weighting) for the problem of reallocating votes in a large, dense city. Barcelona is such a city and, having recently redrawn the boundaries of its census sections, it is an ideal candidate for further scrutiny. Although previous studies show the approaches based on dasymetric techniques outperforming simpler solutions for interpolating census figures, our results show that improvements in the process of reallocating votes are marginal. This brings into question the extra effort that entails introducing ancillary sources of information in a dense urban area for this kind of data. Additional research is required to know whether and when these results are extendable. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competitiveness under Grant CSO2013-43054-R.Pavia, JM.; Cantarino-Martí, I. (2017). Dasymetric distribution of votes in a dense city. Applied Geography. 86:22-31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2017.06.021S22318

Introducing migratory flows in life table construction

The purpose of life tables is to describe the mortality behaviour of particular groups. The construction of general life tables is based on death statistics and census figures of resident populations under the hypothesis of closed demographic system. Among other assumptions, this hypothesis implicitly assumes that entries (immigrants) and exits (emigrants) of the population are usually not significant (being almost of the same magnitude for each age compensating each other). This paper theoretically extends the classical solution to open demographic systems and studies the impact of this hypothesis in constructing a life table. In particular, using the data of residential variations made available to the public by the Spanish National Statistical Office (INE, Instituto Nacional de Estadística) to approximate migratory flows, we introduce in the process of constructing a life table these flows and compare, before and after graduation, the crude mortality rates and the adjusted death probabilities obtained when migratory flows are, and are not, taken into account

COVID-19, Gender Housework Division and Municipality Size in Spain

The COVID-19 health crisis brought with it an increase in the workload on family members due to the restriction of services and the suspension of formal and informal care networks. Numerous studies have analyzed how home confinement have affected different gender gaps, including the gender gap related to chores within the home. This research aims to contribute to the existing literature from the perspective of gender geography by introducing the variable municipality size in the analyses. Our research in the case of Spain shows the COVID-19 health crisis to have had a significant impact on gender gaps, albeit to varying degrees. Women, especially those living in small municipalities, experienced a widening of the gap related to care and domestic workload during confinement. The study of the distribution of the more burdensome chores between genders shows an even more imbalanced scenario to the detriment of women. However, following the end of confinement, the situation improved. Although the imbalance against women remains, the gap with respect to the pre-pandemic situation has been reduce

Termas públicas del Conventus Carthaginiensis. Primera aproximación a su catalogación y estudio

El presente trabajo pretende adelantar parte de los resultados de mi tesis doctoral, titulada Thermae Hispaniae Citerioris. Las termas del Puerto de Carthago Nova: análisis arquitectónico y tipológico, e inserción en el contexto de la arquitectura termal pública de la Hispania Citerior en lo referente a la catalogación sistemática de los complejos termales públicos del Conventus Carthaginiensis, con el objetivo de contribuir a la reconstrucción del lenguaje de la arquitectura pública de las ciudades romanas del conventus a partir de sus mecanismos de transmisión y adaptación desde Carthago Nova como capital.This paper aims to advance some of the results of my PhD thesis, entitled Thermae Hispaniae Citerioris. Carthago Nova Harbour Baths: an architectonical and typological analysis, and integration of the complex in the context of public thermal architecture in Hispania Citerior. In relation to the context, we introduce an advanced of the systematic catalogue of public baths complexes focusing on the reconstruction of the language of public architecture in the Roman cities of the conventus from their transmission mechanisms and adaptation models from Carthago Nova as the capital of the region