1,720,967 research outputs found
Identification and estimation of the effects of school quality on achievement of italian students
Get PDFThe aim of this dissertation is to assess the causal effect of school quality on students' acquisition of skills during the academic year. I exploit information at individual and school level obtained by integrating the data from the second wave of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2003) with the administrative data on schools from the archive Sistema Integrato Segreterie Scolastiche Italiane
(SISSI).
The rich dataset allows to overcome the issue of non-random selection of students into schools of different quality. A general statistical procedure is used to allow for latent 'outcome' and 'treatment' variables –variation of skills and quality, respectively.
The results confirm the main findings of literature, i.e. school quality, as measured by the usual observable characteristics of schools – like class size, does not matter once we control for individual endowment, family background and peer characteristics. Nevertheless, I provide evidence that schools have multiple dimensions of quality and there is some indication of an impact arising from teachers, whose effectiveness in promoting education seem to be explained by their type of job contract in terms of tenure
Impact evaluation of the P.I.P.P.I. programme: a first application of counterfactual analysis
Get PDFThe research focuses on the Italian Programme of Intervention for Prevention of Institutionalization (P.I.P.P.I.), the implementation of an integrated inter-professional, institutional and service method
of intervention, at national level, with families at risk of child neglect. To prove the effectiveness of the
programme with the (quasi) experimental evidence of Impact Evaluation, a set of non-participant families
under the care of standard services are compared to participants of the 4th edition of the programme. Since
a non-random selection process intervenes in the professionals’ choice of the families to be included in
the intervention, specific statistical techniques have been applied to minimize the selection bias resulting
by comparing participants with non-participants. Even if environmental conditions are difficult to change,
statistically significant effects on children’s total risk of out-of-home placement and developmental needs
satisfaction are estimated. Also, the effects on parents’ response to child’s needs are positive and, in general,
professionals’ support to parents becomes less important after they have participated in P.I.P.P.I
Challenges for the Evaluation of the P.I.P.P.I. - Programme of Intervention for Prevention of Institutionalisation: between Partecipative and Experimental Pathways
Get PDFEvaluation is constantly requested by governments and decision-makers, to prove that social policies and actions undertaken are effective in responding to problems. Also programmes contrasting child neglect are involved in such request to guarantee that children enjoy their childhood and ensure access to quality service. This paper focuses on an Italian evaluation experience of one such programme named the P.I.P.P.I. (Programme of Intervention for Prevention of Institutionalisation), the outcome of a collaboration between the University of Padua and the Italian Ministry of Welfare. The paper questions and challenges the experimental designs normally used for these evaluation purposes, highlighting how knowledge of effective treatments is far from the practices delivered. The study proposes an innovative evaluation path in which the participative evaluation, where the professionals build their own knowledge through an evaluation in the field, coexists with the choice of matching as a (quasi) experimental evaluation, responding to the Government’s request for effective investments
P.I.P.P.I.: What has changed? How and why? The empirical evidence
Get PDFThis paper provides a summary of the results of the P.I.P.P.I. Program in achieving the prefixed goals on the final, intermediate and proximal outcome variables, regarding children’s development, the positive exercise of parental competences and the effective action of services respectively. Therefore, the main purpose is to describe the impact of the program on the overall well-being of children and families in relation to the processes implemented. This is possible thanks to the wealth of information gathered by professionals through the tools provided for the analysis, design and monitoring activities in the work with families
REPORT CONCLUSIVO. Terza implementazione (2014-2015). P.I.P.P.I. - Programma di Intervento Per la Prevenzione dell'Istituzionalizzazione
No full textIl testo consiste nel rapporto di valutazione della terza implementazione del programma P.I.P.PI. ed è ad uso interno del Laboratorio di RIcerca e Intervento in Educazione Familiare (Dip. FISPPA) del Ministero del Lavoro e delle Politiche Sociali e delle Regioni e dei relativi Ambiti Terittoriali partecipanti alla suddetta implementazione. Hanno lavorato alla raccolta, all’analisi dei dati e alla stesura del presente rapporto Sara Colombini, Diego Di Masi, Francesca Santello, Marco Ius, Paola Milani, Sara Serbati e Ombretta Zanon. Grazie del contributo indiretto, ma prezioso anche a Marco Tuggia e Chiara Sità. La curatela è di Paola Milani, Sara Serbati, Marco Ius. Un ringraziamento particolare: - alle famiglie che hanno accettato di porsi in atteggiamento di co-apprendimento con i professionisti per consentire al sistema dei servizi di avanzare nella conoscenza di nuove metodologie di intervento; - ai referenti di Regione, di Ambito, ai coach, ai professionisti tutti delle EEMM per essersi coinvolti con interesse e dedizione in questa comunità di pratiche e di ricerca; - a Raffaele Tangorra, Adriana Ciampa, Valentina Rossi, Giovanna Marciano, Cristina Calvanelli, Caterina Manglaviti del Ministero del Lavoro e delle Politiche Sociali per la tenacia, la presenza costante e l’attenzione nel seguire e promuovere il percorso di P.I.P.P.I. nel Paese; - a Verdiana Morandi in primis e poi a Riccardo Stefani, Elena Piai, Fabio Reffo, Marco Santagati dell’ufficio ricerca, al personale dell’amministrazione, alla segretaria amministrativa, Chiara Voutcinitch, del Dipartimento FISPPA per il costante lavoro di supporto a P.I.P.P.I
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Get PDFWe 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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