1,721,013 research outputs found
Measures of wealth and Well-Being. A comparison between GDP and ISEW
No full textIt is well known that, as a measure of well-being, the Gross Domestic Product does not reflect the real wealth of a country but just its monetary counterpart. Thus, it is not fit to differentiate between the costs that enhance welfare and those which, instead, undermine it. For this reason some corrective measures of well-being have been advanced in the literature, one of the most important is the so called Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare. The aim of this work is to explore some of the features of this measure and to calculate it for Italy up to year 2006 comparing it with the time series of Gross Domestic Product. In particular our purpose is to analyze whether the ISEW for Italy registered a decreasing trend as well as the ISEW of other countries. This negative trend was not visible in the previous studies because of the lack of recent data which could not allow to register the threshold
point of the index
Do cognitive reserve and executive functions matter to perform the reading the mind in the eyes test in late lifespan?
No full textTheory of Mind (ToM) is the capacity to understand the feelings and emotional states (i.e., affective ToM) or intentions, goals, and beliefs (i.e., cognitive ToM) of others. Previous evidence on the effect of executive functions and educational attainment on affective ToM is controversial. This study was conducted to investigate: (1) the nature of the associations between affective ToM and some indexes of cognitive reserve (i.e., years of education, vocabulary) in late adulthood when age was controlled; (2) whether cognitive reserve (e.g., years of education, leisure activities, vocabulary) and age predicted affective ToM in late adulthood; (3) the associations between affective ToM and some executive functions measures in late adulthood, controlling for the effect of age; (4) whether executive functioning predicted affective ToM performance; (5) whether some executive functions (i.e., cognitive flexibility and inhibition) mediated between vocabulary score (i.e., used as an index of cognitive reserve) and affective ToM score. Fifty-six 75–93-year-old community-dwellers completed a battery of tasks to assess some executive functions and affective ToM skills (i.e., through the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test). It was found that vocabulary, age, and participation in outdoor socio-recreational leisure activities predicted 31% of the variance in the Reading the Mind in the Eyes condition. Moreover, significant relationships were found between ToM and some executive functions, that is, cognitive flexibility and inhibition predicted 34% of the ToM score. Finally, cognitive flexibility and inhibition mediate between cognitive reserve (i.e., assessed in terms of vocabulary) and Reading the Mind in the Eyes test score
Skills for competitiveness: an empirical analysis of the educational provision for oenologists offered by Italian universities
No full textPurpose: Whilst operating in the context of a high-income economy, the Italian labour market is affected by the considerable challenges of vertical mismatch, skill gaps and skill shortages. In such a context, the aim of this empirical study is to explore current university provision regarding the formal qualification of the oenologist, in order to assess its alignment with the professionalism demands from the wine sector. Design/Methodology/Approach: The following was deployed to analyse university provision with a mixed method approach including social network analysis, cluster analysis and desk analyses based on descriptive statistics. Findings: The comparative analysis outlined in the research on the basis of different educational activities shows that some degree courses would appear to be interchangeable. Furthermore, the study also shows a partial alignment between university educational provision and the skills required by stakeholders, thereby demonstrating the need to make changes in study programmes. Practical implications: The authors hope that the evidence-based suggestions proffered herein may be used as a scientific basis to support the formulation of education policy at the ministerial level and as a guideline to plan and update academic curricula. Theoretical implications: This research contributes to the scientific debate relating to the educational preparation of university graduates and their employability according to the requirements of the professional wine sector. It enriches the theoretical framework of evidence-based educational research, offering alternative avenues for interpretation about the similarity profiles of educational provision. Originality/Values: To the best of our knowledge, the research laid out in this paper is innovative in the field of educational literature due to its use of different methodologies and techniques to obtain results, thereby proposing a wider and alternative use of well known analytical methods
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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