STATISTICS, SOCIOLOGY AND MORE …
Author: Yordan Venedikov
The author is an expert with UNESCO or United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization /Note: Transcription is according "Banks, A (ed.). Political Handbook of the World 1989. New York: CSA Publications, 1989/. More specifically, his work is connected with discrimination of cultural parameters and indicators, as well as, concrete proposals for unification of cultural statistics among the countries with the United Nations.
His thesis proposes an opportunity for constructing an empiric /synthetic/ indicator for culture, which allows comparison between separate regions - countries, enclaves, etc; another asset is comparison for time periods or fixed intervals. Such synthetic indicator enhances in a single number /"cold fusion"/ information for a row of single parameters, do. characteristic of different aspects of culture which are object of direct standardization comparisons. Further, this give a chance countries to be ranked according an order, including: component analysis, factor analysis, multivariate scaling and other. Special attention is paid on taxonomy, including: Mahalanobis' distance, Pena-Trapero's distance, Ivanovich measurement method and other /Source: 1. Fanchette, S. Cultural Indicators: Theory and Practice. Paris: UNESCO, n.d.; 2. Horn, R. From Cultural Statistics to Indicators: Structure and Methods. Paris: UNESCO, n.d.; 3. Gouiedo, L. Framework Indicators: Instrument for Cultural Policy and Planning. Paris: UNESCO, n.d./.
Otherwise, the monograph does include some important statistical theory questions having relevance to health care research. Following are some conclusions of the author:
1. Concretization study is such that renders information for a given population. It can be done via a comprehensive or representative survey. In the first case the results give characteristics of the general population. In the second they carry-over a stochastic error.
2. Generalization study for a hypothetical population can be done via sampling. This procedure, while using definitive entities suffers from the cause-and-effect error, sic. better be an object for the theory of games.
3. Separate reality in the domain of statistics are the sub-samples. They are designed via a multitude of procedures, i.e. randomization, clustering, stratification, matching and other. It is an area for profesionalization in science and is a source for differentiation and integration in science.
4. Misnomer in modern research is the application of variables on a combinatory scale. This brings fluctuations in the analysis which is represented by the faulty confounding and interaction effects. What is important here is to estimate a stopping rule, i.e. the increasingly growing number of mathematical modeling approaches.
5. Exhaustive is the relationship of statistics with the philosophy in research. This is a crossroad where a new science emerges - epistemology; example: whether or not smoking is harmful for health.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter I: From sample to population
Chapter II: Analysis of variance
Chapter III: On the cognitive importance of sociology in research
Chapter IV: The design of questionnaires
Chapter V: On the definition of factors
Chapter VI: Analysis of deviance
Chapter VII: Statistics with limits: The role of culture
Chapter VIII: Yordan's Law
Appendix