aggreCAT: An R Package for Mathematically Aggregating Expert Judgments

Structured protocols, such as the IDEA protocol, may be used to elicit expert judgments in the form of subjective probabilities from multiple experts. Judgments from individual experts about a particular phenomena must therefore be mathematically aggregated into a single prediction. The process of aggregation may be complicated when uncertainty bounds are elicited with a judgment, and also when there are several rounds of elicitation. This paper presents the new R package \pkg{aggreCAT}, which provides 22 unique aggregation methods for combining individual judgments into a single, probabilistic measure. The aggregation methods were developed as a part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) ‘Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence’ (SCORE) programme, which aims to generate confidence scores or estimates of ‘claim credibility’ for 3000 research claims from the social and behavioural sciences. We provide several worked examples illustrating the underlying mechanics of the aggregation methods. We also describe a general workflow for using the software in practice to facilitate uptake of this software for appropriate use-cases.

Download Full-text

Wearable robotic exoskeletons: A socio-philosophical perspective on Duchenne muscular dystrophy research

Paladyn Journal of Behavioral Robotics ◽

10.1515/pjbr-2020-0027 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 404-413

Author(s):

Alexandra Kapeller ◽

Michael H. Nagenborg ◽

Kostas Nizamis

Keyword(s):

Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy ◽

Muscular Dystrophy ◽

Disability Studies ◽

Philosophy Of Technology ◽

Research Projects ◽

Philosophical Perspective ◽

Individual Model ◽

Engineering Sciences ◽

The Social ◽

The Individual

AbstractRecently, several research projects in the Netherlands have focused on the development of wearable robotic exoskeletons (WREs) for individuals with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). Such research on WREs is often treated solely within the disciplines of biomedical and mechanical engineering, overlooking insights from disability studies and philosophy of technology. We argue that mainly two such insights should receive attention: the problematization of the ableism connected to the individual model of disability and the stigmatization by assistive technology. While disability studies have largely rejected the individual model of disability, the engineering sciences seem to still locate disability in an individual’s body, not questioning their own problematization of disability. Additionally, philosophy of technology has argued that technologies are not neutral instruments but shape users’ actions and perceptions. The design of WREs may convey a message about the understanding of disability, which can be comprehended as a challenge and an opportunity: stigmatization needs to be avoided and positive views on disability can be evoked. This article aims to highlight the benefits of considering these socio-philosophical perspectives by examining the case of WREs for people with DMD and proposing design principles for WREs. These principles may enhance acceptability of WREs, not only by individuals with DMD but also by other users, and help engineers to better place their work in the social context.

Download Full-text

The Role of Images on Illness Behaviour: Interdisciplinary Theory, Evidence, and Ideas

Psychological Reports ◽

10.1177/0033294120945602 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 003329412094560

Author(s):

Jennifer Murray ◽

Brian Williams

Keyword(s):

Health Outcomes ◽

Health Beliefs ◽

Intervention Development ◽

Current Paper ◽

Illness Experience ◽

Illness Behaviour ◽

The Social ◽

Image Representations ◽

Behavioural Sciences

If illness behaviour is to be fully understood, the social and behavioural sciences must work together to understand the wider forms in which illness is experienced and communicated with individuals and society. The current paper synthesised literature across social and behavioural sciences exploring illness experience and communication through physical and mental images. It argues that images may have the capacity to embody and influence beliefs, emotions, and health outcomes. While four commonalities exist, facilitating understandings of illness behaviour across the fields (i.e., understanding the importance of the patient perspective; perception of the cause, sense of identity with the illness, consequences, and level of control; health beliefs influencing illness experience, behaviours, and outcomes; and understanding illness beliefs and experiences through an almost exclusive focus on the written or spoken word), we will focus on exploring the fourth commonality. The choice to focus on the role of images on illness behaviour is due to the proliferation of interventions using image-based approaches. While these novel approaches show merit, there is a scarcity of theoretical underpinnings and explorations into the ways in which these are developed and into how people perceive and understand their own illnesses using image representations. The current paper identified that the use of images can elucidate patient and practitioner understandings of illness, facilitate communication, and potentially influence illness behaviours. It further identified commonalities across the social and behavioural sciences to facilitate theory informed understandings of illness behaviour which could be applied to visual intervention development to improve health outcomes.

Download Full-text

WORCS: A workflow for open reproducible code in science

Data Science ◽

10.3233/ds-210031 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-21

Author(s):

Caspar J. Van Lissa ◽

Andreas M. Brandmaier ◽

Loek Brinkman ◽

Anna-Lena Lamprecht ◽

Aaron Peikert ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Best Practices ◽

Source Code ◽

R Package ◽

Open Science ◽

Research Projects ◽

Tabular Data ◽

Step Procedure ◽

Starting Point ◽

Conducting Research ◽

And Training

Adopting open science principles can be challenging, requiring conceptual education and training in the use of new tools. This paper introduces the Workflow for Open Reproducible Code in Science (WORCS): A step-by-step procedure that researchers can follow to make a research project open and reproducible. This workflow intends to lower the threshold for adoption of open science principles. It is based on established best practices, and can be used either in parallel to, or in absence of, top-down requirements by journals, institutions, and funding bodies. To facilitate widespread adoption, the WORCS principles have been implemented in the R package worcs, which offers an RStudio project template and utility functions for specific workflow steps. This paper introduces the conceptual workflow, discusses how it meets different standards for open science, and addresses the functionality provided by the R implementation, worcs. This paper is primarily targeted towards scholars conducting research projects in R, conducting research that involves academic prose, analysis code, and tabular data. However, the workflow is flexible enough to accommodate other scenarios, and offers a starting point for customized solutions. The source code for the R package and manuscript, and a list of examplesof WORCS projects, are available at https://github.com/cjvanlissa/worcs.

Download Full-text

Towards the Construction of Productive Interactions for Social Impact

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13020485 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (2) ◽

pp. 485

Author(s):

Blanca L. Díaz Mariño ◽

Frida Carmina Caballero-Rico ◽

Ramón Ventura Roque Hernández ◽

José Alberto Ramírez de León ◽

Daniel Alejandro González-Bandala

Keyword(s):

Social Impact ◽

Ecological Systems ◽

Research Projects ◽

Structured Interviews ◽

Government Officials ◽

Community Members ◽

Project Duration ◽

The Social ◽

The One ◽

Different Levels

Understanding the value of research for society has become a priority, and several methodologies have been developed to assess the social impact of research. This study aimed to determine how productive interactions are developed during the execution of research projects. A retrospective study was conducted on 33 projects from 1999 to 2020. Semi-structured interviews with the technical managers were conducted to analyze how different actors of the project—researchers, government officials, and civil society and private sector stakeholders—were involved, illustrating how productive interactions occur in specific biodiversity contexts. The results revealed different levels and intensities of productive interactions; on the one hand, three projects involved all actors; eight involved researchers outside the institution; and 25 involved community members. The number of participants ranged from 2 to 37. All research evaluated had a disciplinary orientation. The type and time of interactions with other interested parties depended on the amount of funding, project type, project duration, and, significantly, on the profile of the technical manager. The importance of assessing and valuing productive interactions was identified as a fundamental element in promoting the social impact of research, as well as integrating inter- or multidisciplinary projects that impact the conservation of socio-ecological systems.

Download Full-text

REVIEW OF SOCIAL RESEARCH IN POLAND ON THE SARS-CoV-2 PANDEMIC IN THE LIGHT OF THE FUZZY REASONING PARADIGM

Polityka Społeczna ◽

10.5604/01.3001.0015.0281 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 563 (2) ◽

pp. 1-10

Author(s):

Małgorzata Stochmal ◽

Jan Maciejewski ◽

Andrzej Jarynowski

Keyword(s):

Empirical Research ◽

Quantitative Data ◽

Social Research ◽

Secondary Analysis ◽

Fuzzy Reasoning ◽

Social Attitudes ◽

Research Projects ◽

Qualitative And Quantitative ◽

The Social ◽

Theoretical Assumptions

The article presents the results of the secondary analysis of qualitative and quantitative data in relation to social research conducted in Poland during the pandemic. The research results were introduced on the basis of analyzes of 180 projects carried out by scientific and commercial institutions in the period from January to May 2020. The aim of the project is to present a standard way of conducting empirical research for social researchers who undertake the challenge of identifying the phenomena accompanying the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. We are interested in the possibility of drawing conclusions that go beyond individual research projects carried out in the social field. The conclusions recommended by us concern the following issues: mitigating the polarization of social attitudes dynamically changing during a pandemic, practical solving – and not only diagnosing – problems revealed in COVID reality and supplementing the deficiencies of theoretical assumptions accompanying research works.

Download Full-text

EL PAPEL DE LAS CONVENCIONES SOCIALES. NOTAS PARA EL ESTUDIO DE LAS ORGANIZACIONES BUROCRÁTICAS

Revista Pueblos y fronteras digital ◽

10.22201/cimsur.18704115e.2010.9.162 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 5 (9) ◽

pp. 128

Author(s):

Alma Isunza Bizuet

Keyword(s):

Social Action ◽

Sociological Theory ◽

Research Projects ◽

Related Research ◽

Bureaucratic Organization ◽

Social Conventions ◽

The Public ◽

Public Servant ◽

The Social

En este artículo analizo la propuesta de cambio de paradigmas de las organizaciones burocráticas que busca mejorar la calidad de los servicios públicos ofrecidos a los ciudadanos. El paradigma posburocrático implica una corriente de cambio que cuestiona la figura del «servidor público» y concede mayor importancia a los empleados; se considera el peso y la importancia de las instituciones y su relación con las convenciones sociales que le imprimen una identidad característica a cada organización burocrática particular, por ello examino las aportaciones de la teoría sociológica para comprender la vinculación entre la acción social y las convenciones e instituciones sociales con el fin de documentar la importancia de las convenciones sociales sobre las que descansa el funcionamiento cotidiano de la burocracia, y proponer proyectos de investigación relacionados. ABSTRACTThis paper analyses changes occurred within paradigms in bureaucratic organizations, aiming at proving the quality of the services offered to the citizens. The posbureaucratic paradigm implies a course change that questions from the own conception the figure of the «public servant» and grants the major importance to the employees, it considers the influence and the importance of the institutions and its relation with the social conventions that imprints a characteristic identity to each particular bureaucratic organization, for that reason the contributions of the sociological theory are examined to understand the entailment between the social action and the social conventions and institutions, to illustrate the importance of the social conventions on which the daily operation of the bureaucracy rests; in order to propose related research projects.

Download Full-text

Mathematically aggregating experts' predictions of possible futures

10.31222/osf.io/rxmh7 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Anca Hanea ◽

David Peter Wilkinson ◽

Marissa McBride ◽

Aidan Lyon ◽

Don van Ravenzwaaij ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Data Sets ◽

Future Event ◽

Linear Combinations ◽

Aggregation Methods ◽

Mathematical Rule ◽

Multiple Experts ◽

Combine Probability ◽

Final Group ◽

The Ideal

Experts are often asked to represent their uncertainty as a subjective probability. Structured protocols offer a transparent and systematic way to elicit and combine probability judgements from multiple experts. As part of this process, experts are asked to individually estimate a probability (e.g., of a future event) which needs to be combined/aggregated into a final group prediction. The experts' judgements can be aggregated behaviourally (by striving for consensus), or mathematically (by using a mathematical rule to combine individual estimates). Mathematical rules (e.g., weighted linear combinations of judgments) provide an objective approach to aggregation. However, the choice of a rule is not straightforward, and the aggregated group probability judgement's quality depends on it. The quality of an aggregation can be defined in terms of accuracy, calibration and informativeness. These measures can be used to compare different aggregation approaches and help decide on which aggregation produces the "best" final prediction.In the ideal case, individual experts' performance (as probability assessors) is scored, these scores are translated into performance-based weights, and a performance-based weighted aggregation is used. When this is not possible though, several other aggregation methods, informed by measurable proxies for good performance, can be formulated and compared. We use several data sets to investigate the relative performance of multiple aggregation methods informed by previous experience and the available literature. Even though the accuracy, calibration, and informativeness of the majority of methods are very similar, two of the aggregation methods distinguish themselves as the best and worst.

Download Full-text

The R package “eseis” – a software toolbox for environmental seismology

Earth Surface Dynamics ◽

10.5194/esurf-6-669-2018 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 6 (3) ◽

pp. 669-686 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Michael Dietze

Keyword(s):

Data Science ◽

Earth Science ◽

Science Research ◽

Worked Examples ◽

R Package ◽

Research Field ◽

Data Sets ◽

Research Fields ◽

Scientific Disciplines ◽

Analysis Environment

Abstract. Environmental seismology is the study of the seismic signals emitted by Earth surface processes. This emerging research field is at the intersection of seismology, geomorphology, hydrology, meteorology, and further Earth science disciplines. It amalgamates a wide variety of methods from across these disciplines and ultimately fuses them in a common analysis environment. This overarching scope of environmental seismology requires a coherent yet integrative software which is accepted by many of the involved scientific disciplines. The statistic software R has gained paramount importance in the majority of data science research fields. R has well-justified advances over other mostly commercial software, which makes it the ideal language to base a comprehensive analysis toolbox on. The article introduces the avenues and needs of environmental seismology, and how these are met by the R package eseis. The conceptual structure, example data sets, and available functions are demonstrated. Worked examples illustrate possible applications of the package and in-depth descriptions of the flexible use of the functions. The package has a registered DOI, is available under the GPL licence on the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN), and is maintained on GitHub.

Download Full-text

Designing Online Laddering Studies

Online Research Methods in Urban and Planning Studies ◽

10.4018/978-1-4666-0074-4.ch012 ◽

2012 ◽

pp. 193-215

Author(s):

Thorsten Gruber ◽

Alexander E. Reppel ◽

Isabelle Szmigin ◽

Rödiger Voss

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Urban Planning ◽

Quantitative Research ◽

Research Study ◽

Future Research ◽

Online Environment ◽

Research Projects ◽

Research Technique ◽

The Social ◽

Rich Data

Laddering is a well-established research technique in the social sciences which provides rich data to help understand means-end considerations otherwise hidden from quantitative research. It does this through revealing relationships between the attributes of individuals, objects or services (i.e., means), the consequences these attributes represent for the respondent, and the values or beliefs that are strengthened or satisfied by the consequences (i.e., ends). This chapter describes how qualitative researchers can successfully apply laddering in an online environment. Through an explanation of the different stages of the online laddering process, the authors hope to encourage researchers to use this technique in their urban planning research projects. To illustrate the benefits of the technique, the authors describe a research study that successfully used the laddering technique in an online environment. The chapter concludes with the discussion of the limitations of using laddering online and suggests avenues for future research.

Download Full-text

„Soziale Indikatoren“ in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland? / “Social Indicators” in the Federal Republic of Germany?

Zeitschrift für Soziologie ◽

10.1515/zfsoz-1974-0206 ◽

1974 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Franz-Xaver Kaufmann

Keyword(s):

Federal Republic ◽

Present Report ◽

Social Indicators ◽

Federal Republic Of Germany ◽

Research Projects ◽

Scientific Discussion ◽

Bundesrepublik Deutschland ◽

The Social ◽

Number Of Publications ◽

Measuring Tool

AbstractAlthough the notion of social indicators became a topic of scientific discussion in the Federal Republic of Germany only in 1971, there are today already quite a number of publications as well as research projects centering on this new concept. Research workers and authors, respectively, of these have joined together in the ‘Social Indicators’ Section of the German Sociological Association. The present report underlines the necessity for scientists, administrators, and politicians, to co-operate on the task of developing this new measuring tool; it also discusses some of the difficulties connected with this venture.

Download Full-text