A critical view to current economic topics through an Online-Forum activity

[EN] In order to address the critical thinking and the knowledge of contemporary problems an online forum activity is proposed in this paper. The activity was applied within the World Economy subject in the degree of Business Administration.  The main aim of this teaching proposal is to discuss some current issues and events in the international economic context which likely are not addressed in the syllabus. Through an online forum both teacher and pupils posted comments about some relevant topics related with the subject content. Students have the opportunity to express their own opinion and provide additional information and resources such as news links, documentaries, Youtube videos and other kind of audio-visual material. Despite of this activity was non mandatory, the response was positive, high proportion of pupils (67.1%) were involved in it and 877 comments were published. Thus, the result was satisfactory but there was also some aspects to improve. In addition, this activity is suitable for other subjects or even other university degrees as well and can be easily adapted and modificated.Acknowledges to the project EstadísTIC@ i MatemàTIC@, Servei de Formació Permanent i Innovacio Educativa (SFPIE) de la Universitat de València.http://ocs.editorial.upv.es/index.php/HEAD/HEAD18Caballer Tarazona, V.; Caballer Tarazona, M. (2018). A critical view to current economic topics through an Online-Forum activity. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 221-227. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD18.2018.7953OCS22122

Rubrics for academic dissertation assessment. Does peer assessment work?

[EN] In the recent context of student-centered learning, they are more involved in the whole learning process, while the teacher is only a guide through their learning. This implies that students must be also involved in the assessment process. Following this idea, the peer assessment tries to give the students the opportunity to be in the evaluator position and maybe experience a reflexion about the criteria, what an external person sees in what he/she has to assess. When students have the role of assessing their classmates work, they pay more attention to the content and formal details of the presentation; therefore they can easily identify key points involved in an academic dissertation. This is a good opportunity to actively learn some basic transversal skills for any kind of presentation. Under this context, we present in this paper a comparison of the marks given by both students and teachers, to the same academic dissertation. In addition, we provide the rubric provided to students as a guide for the assessment. As results show, the students’ final decision to assess their peers’ work is quite close to the teacher’s decision. Only light differences were identified, on average, students gave a slightly higher mark to their classmates than the teacher did. However, a correlation on students and teacher marks was found.Pardo García, C.; Caballer Tarazona, V.; Caballer-Tarazona, M. (2019). Rubrics for academic dissertation assessment. Does peer assessment work?. En INNODOCT/18. International Conference on Innovation, Documentation and Education. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 129-138. https://doi.org/10.4995/INN2018.2018.8835OCS12913

Applying Benford's law to monitor death registration data: A management tool for the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Spain, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the various regions of the country differently. The availability of reliable and up-to-date information has proved to be fundamental for the management of this health crisis. However, especially during the first wave of the pandemic (February-August 2020), the disparity in the recording criteria and in the timing of providing these figures to the central government created controversy and confusion regarding the real dimension of the pandemic. It is therefore necessary to have objective and homogeneous criteria at the national level to guide health managers in the correct recording and evaluation of the magnitude of the pandemic. Within this context, we propose using Benford's Law as an auditing tool to monitor the reliability of the number of daily COVID-related deaths to identify possible deviations from the expected trend

Análisis y evaluación económica de sistemas de salud: logro en salud, desempeño y aspectos organizativos

La evaluación de los logros y la eficiencia en los sistemas de salud es un objetivo de investigación central en la economía de la salud. En esta tesis se realiza un análisis de los logros y desempeño de los sistemas sanitarios, partiendo de un estudio general hasta llegar a un análisis micro de la eficiencia. Se trata de evaluar los sistemas de salud desde un plano económico, organizativo y operativo a través de tres casos de estudio desarrollados en tres capítulos. - En primer lugar, se parte de un análisis macro que evalúa el logro en salud de dos grupos de países (países europeos y latinoamericanos) mediante análisis multivariante. Se ha tomado como variable representativa del logro en salud, la esperanza de vida, y se ha determinado que variables de carácter socio-económico-sanitario la determinan en mayor medida. - Seguidamente, se ha identificado Italia como el país que presenta mayores similitudes con España en cuanto a organización sanitaria y características socio-culturales-epideomológicas, con el fin de estudiar ambos sistemas de salud y determinar las fortalezas y debilidades. - Por último, y descendiendo a un nivel de análisis micro, se ha estudiado el desempeño de los hospitales de la Comunidad Valenciana mediante el estudio de la eficiencia de algunos servicios sanitarios de estos hospitales. Para este estudio se han utilizado técnicas no paramétricas, más concretamente el modelo DEA (Análisis Envolvente de Datos), con el fin de clasificar a los servios en función de su eficiencia/ineficiencia. Se proponen además, instrumentos alternativos de medida de la eficiencia, concretamente se construyen dos indicadores de fácil manejo que pueden ser de mayor utilidad a nivel de gerencia de un hospital. Se ha comprobado la validez de estos indicadores con métodos estadísticos.Caballer Tarazona, M. (2007). Análisis y evaluación económica de sistemas de salud: logro en salud, desempeño y aspectos organizativos [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/1971Palanci

The Raising Factor, That Great Unknown. A Guided Activity for Undergraduate Students

In the first years of their economics degree programs, students will face many problems successfully dealing with a range of subjects with quantitative content. Specifically, in the field of statistics, difficulties to reach some basic academic achievements have been observed. Hence, a continuing challenge for statistics teachers is how to make this subject more appealing for students through the design and implementation of new teaching methodologies. The latter tend to follow two main approaches. On the one hand, it is useful for the learning process to propose practical activities that can connect theoretical concepts with real applications in the economic context. On the other hand, we should design multidisciplinary activities that link concepts from different subjects. With this goal in mind, in this article we propose a complete activity for first year students in business administration and economics degree programs, aimed to reinforce some basic statistical and economic concepts, while other basic transversal skills are also practiced, all within the subject of statistics

Predicting healthcare expenditure by multimorbidity groups

[EN] Objectives: This article has two main purposes. Firstly, to model the integrated healthcare expenditure for the entire population of a health district in Spain, according to multimorbidity, using Clinical Risk Groups (CRG). Secondly, to show how the predictive model is applied to the allocation of health budgets. Methods: The database used contains the information of 156,811 inhabitants in a Valencian Community health district in 2013. The variables were: age, sex, CRG's main health statuses, severity level, and healthcare expenditure. The two-part models were used for predicting healthcare expenditure. From the coefficients of the selected model, the relative weights of each group were calculated to set a case-mix in each health district. Results: Models based on multimorbidity-related variables better explained integrated healthcare expenditure. In the first part of the two-part models, a logit model was used, while the positive costs were modelled with a log-linear OLS regression. An adjusted R-2 of 46-49% between actual and predicted values was obtained. With the weights obtained by CRG, the differences found with the case-mix of each health district proved most useful for budgetary purposes. Conclusions: The expenditure models allowed improved budget allocations between health districts by taking into account morbidity, as opposed to budgeting based solely on population size.This work was supported by "Instituto de Salud Carlos III - Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad" and the European Union (FEDER funds) - FIS PI12/00037.Caballer-Tarazona, V.; Guadalajara Olmeda, MN.; Vivas-Consuelo, D. (2019). Predicting healthcare expenditure by multimorbidity groups. Health Policy. 123(4):427-434. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2019.02.002S427434123

Active learning on trust and reciprocity for undergraduates

We propose a teaching activity aimed at promoting social values, such as trust and reciprocity, among undergraduate students in economics and related degrees. We present our pilot experience of what we call RED–‘Reading–Experiment–Discussion’, a three-step activity as part of a class of a specific module at the University of Valencia. During the Reading step, we encourage students to reflect, learn, and critically think about social values. In the second step, Experiment, students make decisions in a trust game experiment, a game created to measure trust and reciprocity in economic environments. Students then give opinions through a post-experiment questionnaire. Our research hypotheses are tested by using non-parametric methods. We also investigate the association between students’ decisions and their attitudinal and sociodemographic characteristics by linear regression analysis. Experimental data show that decisions on trust and reciprocity are dependent on earnings information and that, on average, females trust more than males. Finally, in the Discussion step, the learning is reinforced by sharing the readings about morals and the experimental decisions. In short, RED may be of great help in transmitting to students the role of social preferences in individual decision making

¿Por qué eligen los estudiantes universitarios las titulaciones de Turismo? Análisis de los factores de interés y expectativas de empleo para el alumnado de la Universitat de València.

Las expectativas del alumnado que determinan la elección de una titulación en Turismo condicionan sus conductas durante y después de sus estudios. Para identificar estas expectativas se realizó una encuesta al alumnado de Turismo de primer curso. Un análisis factorial nos ha permitido identificar los factores de mayor peso en la elección: Internacionalización, Expectativas de empleo, Emprendimiento, Importancia del sector e Interés por la titulación. Finalmente, se ha completado el estudio analizando sus expectativas sobre las salidas profesionales vinculadas al ámbito turístico

Formación en competencias trasversales: Conocimiento de problemas contemporáneos

[ES] La enseñanza universitaria se halla inmersa en una profunda transformación debido a los cambios acaecidos en el mercado laboral. Se hace cada vez más necesario la realización de un ajuste entre los conocimientos técnicos del egresado y la demanda de las empresas. Este nuevo panorama, junto con la introducción del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior, exige a los docentes adaptar sus enseñanzas para promover el desarrollo de competencias entre el alumnado. El objetivo de este artículo es analizar la implantación de la competencia transversal 10, Conocimiento de problemas contemporáneos, de la Universitat Politècnica de València en el Grado en Administración y Dirección de Empresas. Se realizará un análisis del aprendizaje seguido por las asignaturas que la evalúan, proponiendo un cambio sustancial en su proceso de aprendizaje y evaluación.[EN] University education is undergoing a profound transformation due to changes in the labour market. It is becoming increasingly necessary to make an adjustment between the technical knowledge of the graduate and the demand of companies. This new scenario, together with the introduction of the European Higher Education Area, requires teachers to adapt their teaching in order to promote the development of competences among students. The aim of this article is to analyse the implementation of the transversal competence 10, Knowledge of contemporary problems, of the Universitat Politècnica de València in the Degree in Business Administration and Management. An analysis will be made of the learning followed by the subjects that evaluate it, proposing a substantial change in its process of learning and evaluation.Puertas Medina, RM.; Calafat Marzal, MC.; Guadalajara Olmeda, MN.; Martín Marín, J.; Caballer Tarazona, V. (2019). Formación en competencias trasversales: Conocimiento de problemas contemporáneos. En JIDDO. I Jornada de innovación en docencia universitaria para la dirección de organizaciones públicas y privadas. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 69-76. https://doi.org/10.4995/JIDDO2019.2019.10127OCS697

Impact of Morbidity on Health Care Costs of a Department of Health through Clinical Risk Groups. Valencian Community, Spain

[ES] Fundamentos: Los sistemas de ajuste de riesgo basados en diagnóstico estratifican la población según la morbilidad observada. El objetivo de este trabajo fue analizar el gasto sanitario total en un área de salud en función de la edad, el sexo y la morbilidad observada en la población. Métodos: Estudio observacional de corte transversal y de ámbito poblacional de los costes de atención sanitaria en el Departamento de salud Dénia-Marina Salud (Alicante) durante el año 2013. Se estratificó a la población (N=156.811) según Grupos de Riesgo Clínico en 9 estados de salud, siendo sano el estado 1 y el 9 el de mayor carga de morbilidad. A cada habitante se le imputaron los costes hospitalarios, de atención primaria y de farmacia ambulatoria para obtener los costes totales. Se analizaron los estados de salud y gravedad por edad y sexo así como los costes de cada grupo. Se aplicaron las pruebas estadísticas t de student y χ2 para verificar la existencia de diferencias significativas entre e intra grupos. Resultados: El coste medio por habitante fue de 983 euros oscilando desde 240 hasta 42.881 en el estado 9 y nivel de gravedad 6. Los pacientes de los estados de salud 5 y 6 realizaron el mayor gasto, pero los estados de salud 8 y 9 tuvieron el mayor gasto medio, siendo el 80% hospitalario. Conclusiones: Se corrobora una diferente composición del gasto sanitario por morbilidad individual, con un crecimiento exponencial del gasto hospitalario.[EN] Background: Risk adjustment systems based on diagnosis stratify the population according to the observed morbidity. The aim of this study was to analyze the total health expenditure in a health area, relating to age, gender and morbidity observed in the population. Methods: Observational cross-sectional study of population and area of health care costs in the Health District of Denia-Marina Salud (Alicante) in 2013. Population (N=156,811) were stratified by Clinical Risk Groups into 9 states of health, state 1 being healthy, and state 9 the highest disease burden. Each inhabitant was charged with the hospital costs, primary care and outpatient pharmacy to obtain the total costs. Health status and severity by age and gender, as well as the costs of each group were analysed. The statistical tests, student t and χ2 were applied to verify the existence of significant differences between and intra groups. Results: The average cost per inhabitant was 983 euros which increased from 240 euros to 42,881 at the state 9 and severity level 6. Patients of health states 5 and 6 caused the largest expenditure by concentration of the population, but health states 8 and 9 had the highest average expenditure, with 80% of hospitalised cost. Conclusions: A different composition of health expenditure per individual morbidity was corroborated, with an exponential growth in hospital spendingCaballer Tarazona, V.; Guadalajara Olmeda, MN.; Vivas Consuelo, DJJ.; Clemente Collado, AC. (2016). Impacto de la morbilidad en los costes asistenciales de un Departamento de Salud de la Comunidad Valenciana a través de estudio de Grupos de Riesgo Clínico. Revista Española de Salud Pública. 90:e1-e15. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/80836Se1e159