Socio-Economic Indicators for Performance Evaluation and Quality Assessment: Statistical Methods and Applications

Social Indicators Research -     

CAN WE INFER HOSPITAL QUALITY FROM MEDICAL GRADUATES’ RESIDENCY CHOICES?

This paper uses a novel approach to infer hospital technical quality from revealed preferences over residency programs. Specifically, we use Spanish medical graduates’ residency choices made from 1995 to 2000. We start by estimating a model of medical graduates preferences that controls for hospital, proximity, specialty, and gender effects. We interpret the coefficients on the hospital dummy variables as measures of medical graduates’ preferences over hospitals. Our results show that graduates do indeed discriminate between hospitals and that their preferences correlate with hospital‐specific covariates arguably related to hospital training quality. We then show that preferences from medical graduates are positively and statistically significantly correlated with risk‐adjusted hospital rankings based on five alternative outcome measures. Finally, we construct reputation scores for each hospital using news story counts in three media outlets and find that medical graduates’ preferences are especially valuable for inference of hospital technical quality of care as they do not simply reflect well known reputation.     

Social work and artefacts: social workers' use of objects in client relations

Social workers' use of physical objects—i.e. artefacts such as paper, computers and plastic models—in client relations is rarely investigated. Most often, research focus is on interpersonal relations, user groups, professional skills and treatment methods in social work. In a study of decision-making tools and their impact on caseworkers' decision making, examples were found of caseworkers using artefacts in client relations. This paper presents these findings and discusses the purposes for which the caseworkers use artefacts. The empirical data consist of 30 qualitative interviews with caseworkers from a study of three different decision-making tools used in eldercare, employment services and child protection in Danish municipalities. The analysis shows that the caseworkers are concerned with the issue of how to justify the questions they ask clients and their assessment of clients. Job counsellors use artefacts to justify sensitive questions, for instance, questions concerning substance abuse. Family counsellors use artefacts as proof that they are guided by a model rather than making up the questions themselves. The caseworkers who grant homecare service use artefacts when rejecting an application.     

Russia: What’s Next?

This paper analyses the assumption that in the actual globalized system, both the role of the state and of the economy have completely changed. In this context it is necessary to highlight that there are some new growth theories, which are going to introduce in the classical economical theory the human capital variable and policy variable as important factors to explain an economic growth as fully as possible. The paper focuses on the case of the Russian Federation and its attempts to modernize the country. Is it correct to adequate the Russian political system to some parameters which can be defined as merely Western? What will be the future of the Russian Federation if the political and the economic élite won’t change their way of conceiving the economic growth and the political system? In fact, at this stage no other options are left to Russia if not to modernize and quickly recover the lost time of the last 30 years, from Gorbaciov to the until now seen Putin leadership.     

Regional Proximity Factor: An Advantage or a Disadvantage for Development?

This paper will focus on the assumption that in the actual globalized system, the role of the State is completely changed due to the new global players that are emerging as international and regional organizations. In this context, the regional proximity factor has acquired great importance, as the three case studies will demonstrate. For this purpose, we will introduce some alternative variables to facilitate the use of economic, political and social tools. Then, we will compare countries’ performances at the global and regional level and their social, economic and political results, in order to improve the utilization of the regional proximity factor as a tool to analyze the international relations dynamics and the innovative national approach to the international opening     

RISK AVERSION AND EXPECTED UTILITY THEORY: AN EXPERIMENT WITH LARGE AND SMALL STAKES

We employ a novel data set to estimate a structural econometric model of the decisions under risk of players in a game show where lotteries present payoffs in excess of half a million dollars. The decisions under risk of players in the presence of large payoffs allow us to estimate the parameters of the curvature of the von Neumann–Morgenstern utility function—not only locally, as in previous studies in the literature, but also globally. Our estimates of relative risk aversion indicate that a constant relative risk aversion parameter of about 1 captures the average of the sample population. We also find that individuals are practically risk neutral at small stakes and risk averse at large stakes—a necessary condition, according to Rabin’s calibration theorem, for expected utility to provide a unified account of individuals’ attitudes toward risk. Finally, we show that for lotteries characterized by substantial stakes, nonexpected utility theories fit the data equally as well as expected utility theory.     

Can Wind Energy Make a Real Contribution to Improve the Quality of Life of Rural/Remote Areas? The European Union and India Compared

Renewable energy can represent a solution to a series of issues including the scarcity of fossil resources, their growing cost, their impact on the environment in terms of greenhouse emissions and climate change. Renewable energy, in particular, could represent an aid to face the problems of isolation and resulting economic and social disadvantages in rural and remote areas of developed but, over all, developing countries, where their use can be a solution to provide electricity and services to resident populations in a sustainable way (both from an economic and environmental point of view) and so could contribute to improve the standards and quality of life in these areas. Wind energy, in particular, has confirmed its worldwide success story as the most dynamically growing energy source. This makes interesting a deepening of benefits but also of criticalities which characterise this kind of energy resource, having in mind that recent studies have foreseen that wind energy would conquer a 50% market share of new power plant installations worldwide by 2019.     

Do Quality of Services and Institutional Image Impact Students’ Satisfaction and Loyalty in Higher Education?

Social Indicators Research - The objective of this study is to investigate whether the quality of educational services and the university’s institutional image influence students’...