scholarly journals Mathematics, risk, and messy survey data

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristi Anne Thompson ◽  
Carolyn Sullivan

Research funder mandates, such as those from the U.S. National Science Foundation (2011), the Canadian Tri-Agency (draft, 2018), and the UK Economic and Social Research Council (2018) now often include requirements for data curation, including where possible data sharing in an approved archive. Data curators need to be prepared for the potential that researchers who have not previously shared data will need assistance with cleaning and depositing datasets so that they can meet these requirements and maintain funding. Data de-identification or anonymization is a major ethical concern in cases where survey data is to be shared, and one which data professionals may find themselves ill-equipped to deal with. This article is intended to provide an accessible and practical introduction to the theory and concepts behind data anonymization and risk assessment, will describe a couple of case studies that demonstrate how these methods were carried out on actual datasets requiring anonymization, and discuss some of the difficulties encountered. Much of the literature dealing with statistical risk assessment of anonymized data is abstract and aimed at computer scientists and mathematicians, while material aimed at practitioners often does not consider more recent developments in the theory of data anonymization. We hope that this article will help bridge this gap.

Author(s):  
Michael R. Acton ◽  
Tim R. Baldwin ◽  
Eric E. R. Jager

PIPESAFE is a hazard and risk assessment package for gas transmission pipelines, developed by Advantica for an international group of gas pipeline companies. Although the likelihood of failure of transmission pipelines is very low, the possibility of failure and a subsequent fire cannot be discounted. PIPESAFE provides the means to take consistent and informed decisions on risk issues, including infringements to pipeline design codes, uprating of pipelines (i.e. to operate at higher pressures), pipeline routeing and land use planning. The development of PIPESAFE was first reported at IPC ’98. This paper describes recent enhancements to the package, validation of the predictions against full-scale experiments and incidents, and modifications to the risk calculation methods. The paper also describes risk criteria developed in the UK and The Netherlands, the background to their development, and the use of PIPESAFE to generate risk criteria included in the latest edition of the UK pipeline code IGE/TD/1.


Author(s):  
Simeon J. Yates ◽  
Jordana Blejmar

Two workshops were part of the final steps in the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) commissioned Ways of Being in a Digital Age project that is the basis for this Handbook. The ESRC project team coordinated one with the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (ESRC-DSTL) Workshop, “The automation of future roles”; and one with the US National Science Foundation (ESRC-NSF) Workshop, “Changing work, changing lives in the new technological world.” Both workshops sought to explore the key future social science research questions arising for ever greater levels of automation, use of artificial intelligence, and the augmentation of human activity. Participants represented a wide range of disciplinary, professional, government, and nonprofit expertise. This chapter summarizes the separate and then integrated results. First, it summarizes the central social and economic context, the method and project context, and some basic definitional issues. It then identifies 11 priority areas needing further research work that emerged from the intense interactions, discussions, debates, clustering analyses, and integration activities during and after the two workshops. Throughout, it summarizes how subcategories of issues within each cluster relate to central issues (e.g., from users to global to methods) and levels of impacts (from wider social to community and organizational to individual experiences and understandings). Subsections briefly describe each of these 11 areas and their cross-cutting issues and levels. Finally, it provides a detailed Appendix of all the areas, subareas, and their specific questions.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172098670
Author(s):  
Stephen Farrall ◽  
Emily Gray ◽  
Phil Mike Jones ◽  
Colin Hay

In what ways, if at all, do past ideologies shape the values of subsequent generations of citizens? Are public attitudes in one period shaped by the discourses and constructions of an earlier generation of political leaders? Using Thatcherism – one variant of the political New Right of the 1980s – as the object of our enquiries, this article explores the extent to which an attitudinal legacy is detectable among the citizens of the UK some 40 years after Margaret Thatcher first became Prime Minister. Our article, drawing on survey data collected in early 2019 (n = 5781), finds that younger generations express and seemingly embrace key tenets of her and her governments’ philosophies. Yet at the same time, they are keen to describe her government’s policies as having ‘gone too far’. Our contribution throws further light on the complex and often covert character of attitudinal legacies. One reading of the data suggests that younger generations do not attribute the broadly Thatcherite values that they hold to Thatcher or Thatcherism since they were socialised politically after such values had become normalised.


MethodsX ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 788-799 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Nurunnabi ◽  
Abdelhakim Abdelhadi ◽  
Rehab Aburas ◽  
Samaher Fallatah

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Bender ◽  
Joseph Jones ◽  
Mark Young ◽  
Hendrike Wulfert-Markert

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 113-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Parsons ◽  
Nicola Yuill ◽  
Mark Brosnan ◽  
Judith Good

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the main messages and key questions for further research arising from the seven-seminar series entitled, “Innovative technologies for autism: critical reflections on digital bubbles”, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council in the UK. Design/methodology/approach A synthesis of the main ideas is presented, drawing on the presentations, discussions, participant feedback, and short papers from across the seminar series, which took place between November 2014-2016. Findings There were many positive examples where technologies were positioned and used as facilitative “bridges” between ideas, communities, understanding, and experiences. Researchers and community stakeholders also emphasised the importance of taking different perspectives and working in stronger partnerships with each other. Four overarching research questions were developed from these themes to provide a roadmap for future research, relating to: responsible innovation, technology-enabled social interaction, learning and pedagogy, and engagement. Originality/value The findings and methodologies produced by the Digital Bubbles seminar series, available on the project website (http://digitalbubbles.org.uk/) and in a series of short papers, provide a rich repository of state-of-the-art thinking in the field of autism and technology that is being utilised nationally and internationally in teaching and learning. This paper suggests some valuable future research directions and highlights the importance of establishing and maintaining multi-disciplinary research teams, with autistic people and their families at their core.


Thorax ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony A Laverty ◽  
Christopher Millett ◽  
Nicholas S Hopkinson ◽  
Filippos T Filippidis

Standardised packaging of tobacco products is intended to reduce the appeal of smoking, but the tobacco industry claims this increases illicit trade. We examined the percentage of people reporting being offered illicit cigarettes before and after full implementation of standardised packaging in the UK, Ireland and France and compared this to other European Union countries. Reported ever illicit cigarette exposure fell from 19.8% to 18.1% between 2015 and 2018 in the three countries fully implementing the policy, and from 19.6% to 17.0% in control countries (p for difference=0.320). Standardised packaging does not appear to increase the availability of illicit cigarettes.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document