A new measurement procedure for attitudinal research. Analysis of its psychometric and informational properties

Since measurement errors have strong effects in all relationships (statistical or otherwise) studied, there is an increasing interest in the data quality, which is the major justification for this research. This paper aims to present a new measurement procedure, the letter scale, which avoids many of the problems connected with the response modalities traditionally used in attitudinal research, especially the ordinal categorical scales. This paper analyzes the error composition of the scores obtained with this new measurement procedure. The validity of the procedure is also analyzed and the observed variance is assessed to determine which part of the observed variance is “valid”, which part is random error (attenuating relationships) and which is correlated error (magnifying relationships). Structural equation models will be used to provide estimates of the measurement quality: (i) Reliability, (ii) Construct validity, method effect and residual variance. In addition, this letter scale is evaluated under another different perspective, Information Theory measures are also used to assess the amount of information transmitted. The relative merits of this new measurement procedure as opposed to other common response modalities will be discussed in both cases.     

Technology, markets and the design of women's jobs—the case of the clothing industry

The clothing industry has been saved largely as a result of the introduction of new technology in response to an increasingly competitive market place. But what affect has this restructuring had upon jobs? We explore how women workers have experienced this change and why policy-making should consider job design.     

The recent worldwide economic crisis and the welfare of children: The case of Cuba

As a consequence of the deeply interdependent nature of today's world, Cuba has been affected by the world recession and by the critical roles of international trade and finance. However, the Cuban government has maintained a constant commitment to the protection of the poor and the children through increasing allocations of resources to education and health and through the promotion of increased levels of popular participation. This paper describes the improvements in the areas of nutrition, health and education and the persistent problems in the area of housing. It shows that the improvements observed have reached the majority of the population, eliminating great disparities.     

Reform of the CAP : Impact on the Third World

The European Community is under pressure to reform the CAP, mainly due to internal financial reasons. Proposals have been put forward by the EC Commission that reform the CAP with respect to milk, oils and fats, and corngluten and citrus pellets. The authors look at the impact of these proposals on developing countries. They conclude that the effect will be to increase non-tariff barriers to trade and increase the cost of food production both in and outside the EC.     

Instability in the labor market for researchers

R&D is both an activity which involves team effort, and with many of the features of a zero-sum game. This paper shows that these characteristics make the labor market for researchers unstable in the sense that firms have incentives to continuously change the composition of their research teams. Related results concerning the core of several cooperative games in characteristic form are also proved.