We survey contributions to the analysis of household liabilities, highlighting relevant theoretical aspects and outlining how data sources may support empirical testing and measurement efforts. Specifically, we classify aspects of household debt, discussing the theoretical and policy relevance of heterogeneity across individual and country dimensions. Aiming to illustrate conceptual and measurement issues, we refer to the approaches and results of some recent relevant country‐specific work on administrative and survey data, and we argue that research in this area would greatly benefit from availability of appropriately classified household liabilities data and of cross‐country institutional information.
This paper aims to identify the presence of energy poverty in Ecuador. Three indicators proposed by the European Union Energy Poverty Observatory (EPOV) are used to construct a multidimensional energy poverty index (MEPI) based on measure conditions associated with energy poverty, in areas related to delays in the payment of electricity bills, disproportionate expenses, hidden energy poverty, and the 10% Boardman (1991) rule. The information comes from the Ecuatorian Life Conditions Survey. The results show that energy poverty is present in Ecuadorian households, at the national level, and just as these indicators have restrictions, advantages and disadvantages, which demand decisions about the choice of their use.
Recent research into the structure of public attitudes suggests that levels of "constraint" in the mass public increased substantially between 1956 & 1972, largely in response to the ideological nature of the 1964 presidential election. The validity of this interpretation is examined, & it is suggested that constraint in the mass public probably did not increase very much, but that reported changes were due instead to changes in the survey items used to measure constraint. Implications of this view are considered. 6 Tables. HA.
Atomic diusion and mixing processes in stellar interiors influence the structure and the surface composition of stars. Some of these processes cannot yet be modelled from the first principles, and they require calibrations. This limits their applicability in stellar models used for studies of stellar populations and Galactic evolution. Aims. Our main goal is to put constraints on the stellar structure and evolution models using new refined measurements of the chemical composition in stars of a Galactic open cluster. Methods.We used medium-resolution, 19 200 R 21 500, optical spectra of stars in the open cluster NGC2420 obtained within the Gaia-ESO survey. The sample covers all evolutionary stages from the main sequence to the red giant branch. Stellar parameters were derived using a combined Bayesian analysis of spectra, 2MASS photometry, and astrometric data from Gaia DR2. The abundances of Mg, Ca, Fe, and Li were determined from non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE) synthetic spectra, which were computed using one-dimensional (1D) and averaged three-dimensional (3D) model atmospheres. We compare our results with a grid of Code d'Evolution Stellaire Adaptatif et Modulaire (CESTAM) stellar evolution models, which include atomic diusion, turbulent, and rotational mixing. Results. We find prominent evolutionary trends in the abundances of Fe, Ca, Mg, and Li with the mass of the stars in the cluster. Furthermore, Fe, Mg, and Ca show a depletion at the cluster turn-o, but the abundances gradually increase and flatten near the base of the red giant branch. The abundance trend for Li displays a signature of rotational mixing on the main sequence and abrupt depletion on the sub-giant branch, which is caused by advection of Li-poor material to the surface. The analysis of abundances combined with the CESTAM model predictions allows us to place limits on the parameter space of the models and to constrain the zone in the stellar interior, where turbulent mixing takes place. ; The work of E.S. was partially funded by the subsidy 3.9780.2017/8.9 allocated to Kazan Federal University for the state assignment in the sphere of scientific activities. MD acknowledges support by FCT/MCTES through national funds (PIDDAC) by these grants UIDB/04434/2020, UIDP/04434/2020 and PTDC/FIS-AST/30389/2017 and by FEDER – Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional through COMPETE2020-Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização by this grant POCI-01-0145-FEDER-030389. MD is supported in the form of a work contract funded by national funds through Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT). M.D. acknowledges financial support from the "Programme National de Physique Stellaire" (PNPS) of the CNRS/INSU co-funded by the CEA and the CNES, France. We acknowledge support by the Collaborative Research centre SFB 881 (projects A5, A10), Heidelberg University, of the Deutsche Forschungsge-meinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation). A.S. is partially supported by the grants ESP2017-82674-R (Spanish Government) and 2017-SGR-1131 (Gen-eralitat de Catalunya). TB was funded by the project grant "The New Milky Way" from the Knut and Alica Wallenberg Foundation, and project grant No. 2018-04857 from the Swedish Research Council. This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia (https://www. cosmos.esa.int/gaia), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/ consortium). Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. Based on data products from observations made with ESO Telescopes at the La Silla Paranal Observatory under programme ID 188.B-3002. These data products have been processed by the Cambridge Astronomy Survey Unit (CASU) at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, and by the FLAMES/UVES reduction team at INAF/Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri. These data have been obtained from the Gaia-ESO Survey Data Archive, prepared and hosted by the Wide Field Astronomy Unit, Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, which is funded by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council. This work was partly supported by the European Union FP7 programme through ERC grant number 320360 and by the Leverhulme Trust through grant RPG-2012-541. We acknowledge the support from INAF and Ministero dell' Istruzione, dell' Università' e della Ricerca (MIUR) in the form of the grant "Premiale VLT 2012". The results presented here benefit from discussions held during the Gaia-ESO workshops and conferences supported by the ESF (European Science Foundation) through the GREAT Research Network Programme. We thank Jan Rybizki for a valuable input concerning the data representation. We thank Andreas Korn for a discussion on modelling the transport of elements. We thank an anonymous referee for their comments and suggestions.
"Academics and policymakers have shown great interest in cross-national comparisons of intergenerational earnings mobility. However, producing consistent and comparable estimates of earnings mobility is not a trivial task. In most countries researchers are unable to observe earnings information for two generations. They are thus forced to rely upon imputed data from different surveys instead. This paper builds upon previous work by considering the consistency of the intergenerational correlation (ρ) as well as the elasticity (β), how this changes when using a range of different instrumental (imputer) variables, and highlighting an important but infrequently discussed measurement issue. Our key finding is that, while TSTSLS estimates of β and ρ are both likely to be inconsistent, the magnitude of this problem is much greater for the former than it is for the latter. We conclude by offering advice on estimating earnings mobility using this methodology." (author's abstract)
As a self-administered survey mode, web surveys allow respondents to temporarily leave the survey page and switch to another web page in a different browser tab or to another window/app. This form of sequential multitasking has the potential to disrupt the response process and reduce data quality if respondents become distracted (Krosnick, 1991; Sendelbah et al., 2016). Browser data indicating respondents leaving the survey page allow non-reactive measurement of their multitasking. We investigated the prevalence of page switching, number of switching events and time spent absent per event with respect to respondents' characteristics and devices used. Furthermore, we analysed the association with data quality (item missing, differentiation in grid questions and number of characters to open-ended questions). The results indicate that the prevalence of page switching is relatively low and the durations of page switching events are rather short. Also, respondents using a PC/tablet are more likely to leave the survey page than those using a smartphone. As to data quality, we did not find any correlation between page switching and the quality of the answers. Thus, this study provides no evidence that multitasking poses a threat to data quality. The findings are discussed with respect to the delimitations of multitasking using browser paradata.
Transparency is widely promoted as an essential condition for good governance, and as an effective tool against public sector corruption more specifically. Although the empirical evidence on the impact of transparency on corruption is growing, empirical evidence remains mixed. Recent critique holds that a main reason for the lack of robust empirical evidence is that both conceptualization and available measures of government transparency are broad and sometimes imprecise. This paper seeks to develop a more precise conceptualization and measure of transparency in the field of public procurement that is actionable for the stakeholders of government decisions. We use data of more than 4 million public procurement contracts between 2006-2015 to investigate the impact of transparency on high-level corruption risks in public procurement across Europe. We also link data from a unique large-scale regional survey to the public procurement dataset to study interactions between transparency and the wider public demand for accountability. We find a strong negative impact of overall tender transparency on corruption risks. The results also show that ex-ante transparency, i.e. transparency before the contract is awarded, has a stronger effect on corruption risks than ex-post transparency, i.e. the availability of information after the contract has been awarded to a bidder. This suggest that providing information to the parties involved in the bidding process rather than to outside observers, is the main condition for wider public accountability to emerge. However, the effectiveness of this type of transparency is strengthened in contexts where there is also a wider societal demand for reduced corruption. In sum, our results suggest that transparency can reduce corruption risks if the information is both relevant to inside observers and actionable.
"Education researchers who study the effect of family social background on student achievement often use students' survey reports of parental education to investigate these effects. However, past research has demonstrated that students misreport their parents' education levels. The authors expand upon this research in two ways. First they use cognitive theories about the response process to develop and test hypotheses about reporting inconsistencies across these variables. Second they evaluate the impact of student misreporting on estimates of the relationship between parental education levels and student math achievement. Using data from the German administration of PISA 2000 (OECD Programme for International Student Assessment) in which both students and parents were asked to report parental variables, the authors show that reporting inconsistencies are a function of student achievement: students with higher math scores tend to provide reports that are more consistent with their parents' reports. This interesting case of differential measurement error has consequences for comparisons of the effects of parental background on student achievement across different subgroups of the population and across countries (a common use of PISA data and other international studies similar to PISA)." (author's abstract)
In this paper we analyse why in some countries the difference in subjective well-being between employed and unemployed young individuals is substantial, whereas in others it remains small. The strength of this relationship has important consequences, hence it affects the intensity of the job search by the unemployed as well as the retention and productivity of employees. In the analysis we are focused on youth and young adults who constitute a group particularly exposed to the risks of joblessness, precarious or insecure employment. We expect that in economies where young people are able to find jobs of good quality, the employment - well-being relationship tends to be stronger. However, this relationship also depends on the relative well-being of the young unemployed. Based on the literature on school-to-work transition we have identified macro-level factors shaping the conditions of labour market entry of young people (aged 15-35), which consequently affect their well-being. The estimation of multilevel regression models with the use of the combined dataset from the European Social Survey and macro-level databases has indicated that these are mainly education system characteristics (in particular vocational orientation and autonomy of schools) and labour market policy spending that moderate the employment–well-being relationship of young individuals.
The relationship between Left-Right political orientations, issue positions, & partisanship is examined in an attempt to determine whether the partisan component of Left-Right scales hinders the determination of the issue placement on such scales. Survey data collected in 1979 from citizens of 8 Western European nations were analyzed for measurement of partisanship, Left-Right self-placement, & attitudes toward issues. Distance measurements of polarization were made, & a regression model was used to test whether partisanship & issues affect the Left-Right orientation scale. Results show that ideological polarization did reflect polarization according to issue. 6 Tables, 1 Figure, 1 Appendix, 28 References. A. Cole
Der vorliegende Aufsatz behandelt Mittelwertvergleiche und Mehrebenenanalysen, die mit unterschiedlichen Datensätzen und Messinstrumenten im Ländervergleich durchgeführt werden, um die studienübergreifende Stabilität von Stichprobenparametern und insbesondere von Effekten in hierarchisch-linearen Modellen zu überprüfen. Als Anwendungsbeispiele dienen die Einstellungen zur Homosexualität in 22 europäischen Ländern, die z.B. im "World Values Survey" (WVS) und der "European Values Study" (EVS) untersucht worden sind. Im Vordergrund stehen unter anderem folgende Fragen: Führen internationale Vergleiche mit unterschiedlichen Umfragereihen zu äquivalenten statistischen Ergebnissen in Mittelwertvergleichen und Mehrebenenanalysen? Hängen die beobachtbaren Länderunterschiede mit einem abweichenden Verständnis von Homosexualität zusammen, das auf zwei unterschiedliche Messungen der abhängigen Variable zurückführbar ist? Die zentrale Hypothese lautet, dass die Länderkontexte jenseits der Einflüsse von Individualvariablen von zentraler Bedeutung sind. In Abschnitt 2 werden die beiden Messinstrumente vorgestellt, in Abschnitt 3 werden die Verteilungen und Mittelwerte der beiden Variablen für die Messreihen Wertstudien 1999 und ISSP 1998 miteinander verglichen. In Abschnitt 4 werden die Mehrebenenanalysen als Fallbeispiel des Vergleichens von Vergleichen als Validierungsstrategie präsentiert. In Abschnitt 5 werden offene Forschungsfragen diskutiert und es wird vorgeschlagen, das Verfahren als Standard für die Sekundäranalyse von Umfragedaten zu etablieren. (ICI2)
The concept of legitimate culture plays a crucial role in the study of the relationship between the differentiation of tastes and the reproduction of social inequalities. Nevertheless, the actual role of legitimate culture in present society is often disputed in light of a supposed crumbling of the privileged structure of the fine arts. Meanwhile, the existing practice of survey research often neglects this institutional dimension of the legitimisation of taste and researchers often withdraw from attempts to develop an empirically-based scale to measure the legitimacy of taste. The aim of this paper is to develop a method of measurement of cultural capital which is based on empirical evaluation of the legitimacy of respondents' taste. Specifically, this measurement links responses to open-ended questions about favourite cultural goods with institutionalized critical ratings. The particular focus is to answer how this methodologically innovative approach relates to prevalent instruments for measurement of cultural capital (highbrow culture attendance, educational credentials) and how it could inform the study of the change of legitimate culture. The study uses data from a survey of Czech youth cultural consumption (N=524). The results show close ties between the institutional measurement of cultural capital and the Bourdieusian application of Multiple Correspondence Analysis as a mean to identify significant cultural differences. While the feasibility of institutional measurement of cultural capital in survey data could be disputed, it is a useful tool to advance our understanding of how legitimate culture operates in present society.
JWBR received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 805246) and from the Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) grant NE/N011716/1. ; Boron isotopes in marine carbonates are increasingly used to reconstruct seawater pH and atmospheric pCO2 through Earth's history. While isotope ratio measurements from individual laboratories are often of high quality, it is important that records generated in different laboratories can equally be compared. Within this Boron Isotope Intercomparison Project (BIIP), we characterised the boron isotopic composition (commonly expressed in δ11B) of two marine carbonates: Geological Survey of Japan carbonate reference materials JCp‐1 (coral Porites) and JCt‐1 (giant clam Tridacna gigas). Our study has three foci: (a) to assess the extent to which oxidative pre‐treatment, aimed at removing organic material from carbonate, can influence the resulting δ11B; (b) to determine to what degree the chosen analytical approach may affect the resultant δ11B; and (c) to provide well‐constrained consensus δ11B values for JCp‐1 and JCt‐1. The resultant robust mean and associated robust standard deviation (s*) for un‐oxidised JCp‐1 is 24.36 ± 0.45‰ (2s*), compared with 24.25 ± 0.22‰ (2s*) for the same oxidised material. For un‐oxidised JCt‐1, respective compositions are 16.39 ± 0.60‰ (2s*; un‐oxidised) and 16.24 ± 0.38‰ (2s*; oxidised). The consistency between laboratories is generally better if carbonate powders were oxidatively cleaned prior to purification and measurement. ; Publisher PDF ; Peer reviewed
