76 research outputs found
Measuring the capability of living a healthy life with fuzzy logic in a gender perspective
No full textThe capability of living a healthy life can be considered a key dimension in the construction of individual well-being. It is itself the outcome of a complex sets of indicators including also subjective indicators. This paper measures health at individual level by using fuzzy logic to keep the complexity of its definition while providing a crisp indicators of the level of health that can be disaggregated in the relevant intermediate variables. The system has been implemented on Italian Istat survey on health conditions and the results show a higher gender inequality in the level of health than it can be obtained by using traditional techniques to measure health. We do find that controlling for age, still women are characterized by poorer health conditions. Data disagggregated by area show variability in the outcome that can be connected to the different policies enacted across regions
THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF COUNTRIES FOR FDI. A FUZZY APPROACH
No full textThis paper presents a new method for measuring the attractiveness of countries for FDI. A ranking is built using a fuzzy expert system whereby the function producing the final evaluation is not necessarily linear and the weights of the variables, usually defined numerically, are replaced by linguistic rules. More precisely, weights derive from expert opinions and from econometric tests on the determinants of countries’ FDI. As a second step, the view-point of investors from two different investing economies, the UK and Italy, are taken into account. Country-specific factors, such as the geographic, cultural and institutional distances existing between the investing and the partner economies are included in the analysis. This shows how the base ranking changes with the investor’s perspective
A fuzzy approach to face the multimensional aspects of well-being
No full textThis paper is a survey of recent results of a new
frontier research facing the social aspects of life as the wellbeing
concept using fuzzy logic. The new impulse that Sarkozy document
has produced in the necessity to define new indicators
of wellbeing that go beyond GDP, has produced the necessity
to measure something that is not measurable with classical
techniques. Concepts as quality of life, work, health, are mediated
by human perception and intangible evaluation. A fuzzy logic
approach gives the opportunity to face these problems thanks to
its capability to works in a framework of uncertainty, ambiguity
and vague information, situations that are typical of social and
human problems
Measuring Gender Equality in Universities
No full textThe paper proposes a fuzzy expert system for gender equality evaluation in tertiary education that has been experimented in 6 European universities in Italy, Lithuania, Finland, Germany, Portugal, Ukraine within the EQUAL-IST Horizon 2020 project with the goal to design and implement Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) for IST Research Institutions. We propose a Fuzzy Expert System (FES), a cognitive model that, by replicating the expert way of learning and thinking, allows to formalize qualitative concepts and to reach a synthetic measure of the institution’s gender equality (ranging from 0 to 1 increasing with gender equality achievements), that can be then disentangled in different dimensions. The dimensions included in the model relate to gender equality in the structure of employment (academic and non academic) and in the governance of the universities, to the equal opportunity machinery and to the work-life balance policies promoted by the institutions. The rules and weights in the system are the results of a mixed strategy composed by gender equality experts and by a participatory approach that has been promoted within the EQUAL-IST project. The results show heterogeneity in the final index of gender equality and allow to detect the more critical areas where new policies should be implemented to achieve an improvement in gender equality. The value of the final gender equality index resulting from the application of the FES is then compared to the gender equality perceived by each institution involved in the project and will be used to improve also the awareness in gender gap in important dimensions in tertiary education setting
The interaction between parents and children as a relevant dimension of child well being. The case of Italy
No full textThis paper follows in the study of the building of children' social interaction with parents using the capability approach. Parents' role in child well being is well documented by evolutionary psychology and psychoanalysis, here we will try to put in relation and to come to a measure of different factors that can affect its development. We propose a fuzzy expert system to measure this capability both at a theoretical and empirical level. The applied part of the paper use a data set based on a matched data source of ISTAT (Italian National Statistical Office 2008) multipurpose survey on family and on children condition in Italy to recover information on children’s education, the socio-demographic structure of their families, child care provided by relatives and parents according to the type of activities in which the children are involved, and Bank of Italy Survey on household income and wealth year 2008 (SHIW08) to control how family income may enter in the final evaluation This is one step of a more complex system allowing for a richer set of indicators and of dimension of child well being as well as for their interaction
Sen's Capability and Functionings: A fuzzy system to evaluatehow parents interact with their children.
No full textThis paper follows in the study of the building of children' social interaction with parents using the capability approach. Parents' role in child well being is well documented by evolutionary psychology and psychoanalysis, here we will try to put in relation and to come to a measure of different factors that can affect its development. We propose a fuzzy expert system to measure this capability both at a theoretical and empirical level. The applied part of the paper use a data set based on a matched data source of ISTAT (Italian National Statistical Office 2008) multipurpose survey on family and on children condition in Italy to recover information on children’s education, the socio-demographic structure of their families, child care provided by relatives and parents according to the type of activities in which the children are involved, and Bank of Italy Survey on household income and wealth year 2008 (SHIW08) to control how family income may enter in the final evaluation This is one step of a more complex system allowing for a richer set of indicators and of dimension of child well being as well as for their interaction
IgM anti-SARS-CoV-2-specific determination: useful or confusing? Big Data analysis of a real-life scenario
No full textThe interaction between parents and children as a relevant dimension of child well being. The case of Italy
No full textQualità della vita base della qualità del lavoro
No full textIl presente lavoro si è proposto di analizzare la formazione del benessere nella sua multidimensionalità fondandosi teoricamente su un approccio macro riproduttivo esteso. L’approccio scelto consente di evidenziare la rilevanza nella misurazione dei livelli di benessere di componenti non monetarie e analizza i livelli di benessere sia a livello individuale che a livello familiare. Un risultato collaterale dell’analisi è stato la costruzione, attraverso l’approccio combinato micro-macro, ispirato al metodo del propensity score matching, di un data set che contiene indicatori attinenti alle diverse dimensioni ritenute rilevanti per l’analisi del modello teorico di riferimento ottenuto integrando i microdati della Banca d’Italia sui ‘Bilanci delle famiglie Italiane’ del 2000 (IBFI) con un vettore di informazioni presenti nell’indagine ISTAT ‘Famiglie, soggetti sociali e condizioni dell’infanzia’ del 1998. La formazione del benessere e la sua misurazione ha richiesto, per mantenere la complessità richiesta dall’oggetto di analisi, l’uso di tecniche fuzzy e la costruzione di un sistema fuzzy esperto all’interno del quale sono confluiti gli assi delle condizioni di vita con riferimento sia alla dimensione individuale che alle dimensioni riguardanti il nucleo familiare. L’implementazione del sistema al data set integrato ha consentito di rilevare le differenze di genere nella formazione del benessere e di mostrare le diseguaglianze che l’attenzione alla sola dimensione familiare o alle sole componenti monetarie non consentiva di cogliere
Gender equality in tertiary education and research institutions. An evaluation proposal.
No full textGender inequality in research and innovation is well documented (European Commission, 2016) and tools to
measure and monitor it have been proposed and tested within EU funded projects as GenderTime (Badaloni & Perini, 2016)
or Effective gender equality in research and academia (EGERA) (http://www.egera.eu/). The evaluation proposal at the heart
of this contribution has been developed within EQUAL-IST project (Gender Equality Plans for Information Sciences and
Technology Research Institutions) funded under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
that aims at introducing structural changes in research organizations to enhance gender equality within Information System
and Technology Institutions. The dimensions and indicators used to measure gender equality are consistent to those that
the literature on gender equality in research and academic institutions have shown to be significant. Our contribution shows
an innovation in the choice on how to measure gender equality by using Fuzzy Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (FMCDA). We
propose a Fuzzy Expert System, a cognitive model that, by replicating the expert way of learning and thinking, allows to
formalize qualitative concepts and to reach a synthetic measure of the institution's gender equality (ranging from 0 to 1
increasing with gender equality achievements) that can be then disentangled in its different dimensions. The latter
characteristic of the model that we propose can be fruitfully used by policy makers and Equal opportunity officers in order
to detect and address the critical elements in the organization and carry out changes to improve gender equality. A first
application of the model has been experimented within the EQUAL-IST project and is available for other universities and
research institutions wishing to obtain an assessment of their organization in terms of gender equality. Further developments
of the model, together with its wider implementation, include the assessment by using fuzzy logic of gender equality policies
and institutional factors affecting gender equality within the institution
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