Analysing the dimensions of social pedagogy from an international perspective

Over recent years, social pedagogy has emerged or undergone transformation processes in many countries, justifying the need to understand how it is being shaped and transformed throughout the world. However, conceptual ambiguity and lack of a homogenous and unified theoretical body accentuate the dilemma of whether social pedagogy is a specific area of knowledge, a professional field, a research field or all of these at once. We have moved into a stage where we do not have an immediate answer as to what social pedagogy is, what kind of knowledge it is or what its specific working methods are. This research aims to provide a comprehensive and rigorous analysis of social pedagogy from an international perspective. The methodology employed herein is the Delphi method, using three questionnaires in three different phases. Based on the individual contributions of a group of renowned experts from different countries, our aim is to build a global, current and integrated view of social pedagogy.     

Community Interests and Indicator System Success

Testing the validity of indicator systems is a task almost always left to the scientific community, in standard practice and in keeping with the quest for objectivity prevalent in politics and in society as a whole. This paper calls for a reinvigorated agenda within indicators research to question this practice and develop alternative methodologies to test the validity, legitimacy and impacts of indicator systems. The assumptions of objectivity are not realistic in contemporary policy contexts. As a result, the scientific community is not the only community with a stake in assessing an indicator system; it is perhaps not even the most important one. Four other community types with distinct interests in the design, use and impacts of indicator systems are identified. First is the community of elected officials, whose positions of power make their perspective important and unique; second is the community of engaged publics, whose stake is made clear by the principles of participatory and deliberative democracy; third are communities of cultural difference; and fourth are professional communities. The unique relationship each of these communities has with indicator systems, and thus the tests and challenges offered by each to the practice of indicators, is discussed through a case study of a public participation process for the development of a new set of regional sustainability indicators in Vancouver, Canada. The evidence suggests new research questions for scholars in policy and indicators studies who seek to better understand paths and barriers to implementation and impact in indicators practice, as well as lessons for other local indicators practices.

NIVAH: a composite index measuring violence and harm in the U.S.

The National Index of Violence and Harm (NIVAH) tracks levels of violence and harm in the United States and identifies trends over the study period 1995–2003. NIVAH is comprised of nineteen variables in the areas of interpersonal, intrapersonal, institutional and structural violence and harm as experienced by people in the U.S. Two composite indexes are formed to describe overall trends in the realms of personal and societal violence. In addition to describing the Index’s construction and most recent conclusions, various methodological issues and their impacts on index findings are investigated.

Sustainable Housing in the Urban Context: International Sustainable Development Indicator Sets and Housing

Housing, an essential aspect of quality of life, is also significant for sustainable development (SD). All of the major international statements on SD refer to housing or settlement strategies. However, indicator sets derived from these statements often fail to include good indicators of sustainable housing. This article outlines the conceptualisation of SD and housing from the international statements. It proceeds by describing the international indicator sets which have been constructed based on these policy statements. International organisations such as the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (EU) have all produced indicator sets. However, this article contends that housing is an underdeveloped indicator and calls for more attention to be paid to the importance of aspects of housing for SD and the measurement of progress towards it via social indicators.

An Index of the Condition of Children: The Ideal and a Less-than-Ideal U.S. Example

This paper uses recent data on U.S. children from the National Survey of America’s Families (NSAF) to create indices that tally the number of problems or risks that individual children experience. We compare results with those from indices developed elsewhere that assess the change across sets of population-level indicators. While the two types of indices show similar trends over time, specific changes, as well as trends, depend on the specific domain of well-being or context examined, highlighting the importance of the distinction between well-being and context. Children with problems in multiple domains tend to be socio-economically and demographically disadvantaged compared with other children. We preface this work by providing an overview of the history of child well-being indicators and distinguish indices of child well-being from indices of the condition of children.

Measuring university-based research in Europe: competing indicators and underlying assumptions

Modern societies have a growing need for information and numbers for governing social life. Numbers have the ability to represent a complex reality in a simplified and linear form, easily communicated. Far from being the product of a mere technical process, numbers are the result of a process that “is fundamentally social – an artifact of human action, imagination, ambition, accomplishment” (Espeland, W.N., and Stevens, M.L., 2008. A sociology of quantification. European journal of sociology, 49 (3), 401–436, p. 431). In the modern policy-making climate, numbers become key mechanisms for simplifying, classifying, comparing and evaluating. Along with this, the fields of visibility of evaluative objects, meanings and understandings (Dean, M., 2010. Governmentality. Power and rule in modern societies. 2nd ed. London: Sage) are re-framed consistently with what Clarke, J. (2004. Changing welfare, changing states. New direction in social policy. London: Sage) terms a ‘performance/evaluation nexus’ that links effort, values, purposes and self-understanding to measures and comparisons of outputs (Ball, S.J., 2012. Performativity, commodification and commitment: an I-Spy guide to the neoliberal university. British journal of educational studies, 601, 17–28). In this paper, we focus on the field of higher education (HE), where numbers, in the form of performance indicators, benchmarks and headline targets, are frequently used to strategically orient the sector towards the objectives and goals of the Bologna Process and of the overall Europe 2020 agenda (Waldow, F., 2014. From taylor to tyler to no child left behind: legitimating educational standards. Prospects, 45 (1), 49–62). We aim to offer a comparative overview of the complex spectrum of metrics, provided at the supranational level, within the field of higher education by focusing on the European Research Area (ERA) in order to map and analyse some of the crucial issues in play. A second ambition of this paper is to move from a mapping and analytical perspective to a deconstruction of a specific subset of research metrics, with the aim of challenging the ‘self-evident truths’ and the dominant conventional wisdom that define current European metrics in order to bring into question whether they contribute to restructuring the universities’ research environments, affecting research policies and procedures. Performance indicators are posited to be‘conceptual technologies’, encompassing theoretical and normative assumptions that shape the objects they aspire to measure.     

基于随机森林算法的贫困精准识别模型研究

扶贫对象的精准识别是实现精准扶贫的重要条件。实现贫困数据的精准分类与识别以及贫困识别由定性到定量、由单维瞄准向多维瞄准的转变是精准扶贫的重要基础。精准识别可以采用大数据分析中的分类算法实现。本文基于可持续生计分析框架,从人力资本、社会资本、自然资本、物质资本、金融资本和生计环境六个方面建立了多维贫困指标体系,运用随机森林算法构建了精准识别模型,并采用中国家庭追踪调查数据（CFPS）,对扶贫对象精准识别模型的分类及识别效果进行了评价,结果表明模型效果良好。     

基于AHP的农村致贫因素研究

基于系统论观点,对农村贫困的影响因素进行层次划分,从自然、经济、社会三个方面构建包括4个层级、27个指标的农村致贫因素评价指标体系,然后结合四川省青川县实际情况,运用AHP方法对其致贫因素进行综合评析,得出该县主要致贫因素,并据此提出相应的对策建议,为进一步制定脱贫政策提供定量依据和参考。     

中国对外直接投资环境的ANP评价模型与应用

本文详细分析了我国对外直接投资的背景和动因,完善了对外直接投资环境评价的指标体系,并引入新的工具（网络层次分析法）确定指标权重,且给予详细说明和实证分析,从而对我国对外直接投资环境评价的工具方法进行了有益探索。     

我国创意产业园区竞争力评价指标体系研究与实证分析——以上海市创意产业园区为例

创意产业园区作为创意产业这一朝阳行业的主要载体,在国内外蓬勃兴起。对创意产业园区竞争力进行科学、全面的测评,不仅有助于创意产业园区更好更快地发展,而且对于区域竞争力和国家竞争力也起着重要的作用。通过对创意产业园区竞争力评价体系的分析与设计,用熵值法确定指标权重,对综合竞争力和各要素竞争力分别建立了TOPSIS评价模型和线性加权综合评价模型,采用上海市18家典型创意园区的近三年数据进行实证分析,依此为创意产业园区发展政策的制定提供决策支持。