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In brief...
“[…] it is hard to imagine that the
debate on the use of composite indicators will ever be settled […]
official statisticians may tend to resent composite indicators, whereby a
lot of work in data collection and editing is “wasted” or “hidden” behind a
single number of dubious significance. On the other hand, the temptation of
stakeholders and practitioners to summarise complex and sometime elusive
processes (e.g. sustainability, single market policy, etc.) into a single
figure to benchmark country performance for policy consumption seems
likewise irresistible.”
Andrea Saltelli, JRC
What's New in
2009
2008 Ibrahim Index
of African Governance
The Index of African Governance,
developed by the
Harvard Kennedy School,
aims to measure the quality of political goods provided by 48
African states south of Sahara to their citizens.
The Index assesses governance
issues according to a five-pillar conceptual structure: (a) Safety and
Security, (b) Rule of Law, Transparency, and Corruption, (c)
Participation and Human Rights, (d) Sustainable Economic Opportunity,
and (e) Human Development.
A
validation review (PDF, 1.1 MB) conducted independently by the European
Commission’s Joint Research Centre in 2009
aims to critically assess the
methodological approach of the Index.
4th Conference of the International Rankings Expert Group
Astana,
Kazakhstan, 14-16 June 2009
The three main topical lines of the Astana conference were:
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international/regional rankings;
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national
rankings;
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approaches and
measurements for developing comparable transnational data while
respecting the limitations of a “culture of numbers” in assessing
quality of research or other activities carried out by higher education
institutions.
Presentation of
the JRC work on "Rickety
Numbers - Volatility of international rankings of higher education and
implications for policy making" by Andrea Saltelli. Full report
here
OPHI
Workshop on Robustness Methods for Multidimensional Welfare Analysis
5-6 May 2009, Oxford
The goal of this
OPHI workshop is to identify and discuss
specific areas for research aimed at developing stronger methodologies of
robustness for multidimensional well-being analysis. Special emphasis is given
to stochastic dominance techniques. The sessions will survey how various methods
have been applied in the literature, and identify strengths and weaknesses of
the techniques and discuss potential further developments. See
presentation
given by Andrea Saltelli.
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Events 2009 |
Composite
indicators development and assessment
Bilbao, Spain, 31 March - 2 April |
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OPHI Workshop on
Robustness Methods for Multidimensional Welfare Analysis
Oxford, 5-6 May
2009 |
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Workshop: Can
creativity be measured?
Brussels, 28-29
May 2009 |
XLVI International Conference of the
Italian Society on Economics, Demography and Statistics (SIEDS)
Florence, Italy, 28-30 May |
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4th Conference of the International Rankings
Expert Group
Astana,
Kazakhstan, 14-16 June 2009 |
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European Survey Research Association
Conference (ESRA 2009)
Warsaw, Poland, 29
June-3 July 3 2009 |
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Innovative Approaches to Turn Statistics into
Knowledge
Washington D.C.,
United States, 15-16 July 2009
US Census Bureau,
OECD, World Bank Seminar |
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IX ISQOLS Conference on Quality of Life
Studies
Florence, Italy,
19-23 July 2009 |
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7th International Conference of Numerical
Analysis and Applied Mathematics (ICNAAM 2009)
Crete, Greece,
18-22 September 2009 |
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Constructing Composite Indicators: Theoretical and
practical aspects
Luxembourg, 22-23 September 2009
Eurostat/JRC Seminar |
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First International Conference on Advances in
System Simulation
Porto, Portugal,
20-25 September 2009 |
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European Conference on Educational Research
Vienna, Austria,
25-30 September 2009 |
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Third OECD World
Forum on “Statistics, Knowledge and Policy”.
Charting Progress, Building Visions, Improving Life
Busan, KOREA, 27-30 October 2009 |
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3rd International Conference on World-Class
Universities (WCU-3)
Shanghai, China, 2-4 November 2009 |
Past news
Higher Education Rankings: Robustness Issues and
Critical Assessment
How much confidence can we have in Higher
Education Rankings?
The Academic Ranking of World Universities
(by Shanghai's Jiao Tong University) and the TIMES Higher Education
Supplement (THES) ranking have become, probably beyond the intention of
their developers, a reference for scholars and policy makers in the
field of higher education. The question addressed in this JRC report is
whether the Shanghai ranking serves the purposes it is used for, and
whether its immediate European alternative, the British THES, can do
better.
More on the story:
Higher education rankings: are they
statistically reliable?
(24/11/08, JRC press release)
Vers un classement européen des universitése
(14/11/08, LeMonde)
More European angst and action
(30/11/08, Global Higher Education)
CRELL: critiquing global university rankings and
their methodologies (29/01/09, Global
Higher Education)
EUROPE: Are higher education rankings reliable?
(30/11/08, University World News)
HANDBOOK ON
CONSTRUCTING COMPOSITE INDICATORS:
METHODOLOGY AND USER GUIDE
 This Handbook aims to provide a guide to the construction
and use of composite indicators, for policy-makers, academics, the media and
other interested parties. While there are several types of composite indicators,
this Handbook is concerned with those which compare and rank country performance
in areas such as industrial competitiveness, sustainable development,
globalization and innovation. The Handbook aims to contribute to a better
understanding of the complexity of composite indicators and to an improvement in
the techniques currently used to build them. In particular, it contains a set of
technical guidelines that can help constructors of composite indicators to
improve the quality of their outputs.
It has been prepared jointly by the OECD (the Statistics Directorate and the
Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry) and the Applied Statistics and
Econometrics Unit of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission
in Ispra, Italy. |
2008 Composite Learning Index:
Measuring Canada's progress in Lifelong Learning
The 2008 Composite
Learning Index (CLI) is developed for more than 4,700 communities in Canada
to measure progress in lifelong learning. The CLI is based on seventeen
indicators that reflect the many ways Canadians learn, whether in school, in
the home, at work or within the community. The first index of its kind in
the world, the CLI is a valuable measurement tool that recognizes how
learning throughout a person’s life is critical to their success, the
success of the community and the success of the country as a whole. The CLI
has been assessed as “internally sound and robust” in a
validation review (PDF, 1.1 MB) conducted by the European Commission’s
Joint Research Centre in 2007.
2008 Environmental Performance Index
The 2008
Environmental Performance Index (EPI) was developed for 149 countries and is
based on twenty-five indicators in 6 policy categories: Environmental
Health, Air Pollution, Water, Biodiversity and Habitat, Productive Natural
Resources, Climate Change. The 2008 EPI aims to bring a data-driven,
fact-based and empirical approach to environmental protection and global
sustainability. The
Unit of Econometrics and Applied Statistics at the
Joint Research Centre of the European Commission has provided
input to the 2008 EPI issued today at the World Economic Forum in Davos by
Yale and Columbia Universities. The JRC has examined the robustness of the
results to the methodological assumptions, and thereby shed light on those
countries for which the results are highly sensitive to the methodological
assumptions of the Index.
Comparative Analysis of Alcohol Control Policies in 30
Countries
The
World Health Organization places a high priority on controlling
alcohol-related problems through effective economic and public health
measures. Nevertheless, the Alcohol Policy Index, the first on this issue,
revealed wide variation in the strength of alcohol control policies among
the 30 countries in Europe, Asia, North America, and Australia that
constitute the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. These
countries received scores ranging from 14 to 67 out of a possible 100
points.
[Source: Brand, Saisana, Rynn, Pennoni, Lowenfels,
PLoS Medicine
2007, 4(4):752-759].
Is happiness measurable
and what do those measures mean for policy?
International Conference, Rome, 2-3 April, 2007.
Organised jointly by the OECD, the Bank of Italy, the Centre
for Economic and International Studies (CEIS) of the University of Rome “Tor
Vergata” and the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission,
this International Conference aimed at gathering recent advances, studies
and surveys on happiness and life satisfaction. These advances, so some
would argue, open the door to different paradigms for policy-making:
paradigms, for instance, which see people’s happiness, rather than national
income, as the goal that policy-makers seek to maximise.
Summary
>>more
Measuring Well-being and Societal Progress
CRELL/OECD organised a workshop aiming at setting the
direction for OECD and JRC research in this area over the coming years.
Among the objectives were the challenges involved in constructing aggregate
measures of well-being, and the specific role of education in such aggregate
measures. Milan, 19-21 June, 2006.
Conclusions and Follow-Up
Joint
JRC-OECD Handbook on composite indicators
Nardo, M. M. Saisana, A.
Saltelli and S. Tarantola (EC/JRC), A. Hoffman and E. Giovannini (OECD),
Handbook On Constructing Composite Indicators: Methodology And User Guide,
OECD Statistics Working Paper. For a more technical paper see
Tools for Composite Indicator Building, JRC EUR 21682 report
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OECD
World Forum Proceedings,
June 27-30, 2007, Istanbul-Turkey