Improving social measurements: the experience of the ESS first rounds in Spain

With the two aims of monitoring social change and improving social measurement, the European Social Survey is now closing its third round. This paper shows how the accumulated experience of the two first rounds has been used to validate the questionnaire, better adapt the sampling design to the country characteristics and efficiently commit fieldwork in Spain. For example, the dynamic character of the population nowadays makes necessary to estimated design effects at each round from the data of the previous round. The paper also demonstrates how, starting with a response rate of 52% at first round, a 66% response rate is achieved at the third round thanks to an extensive quality control conducted by the polling agency and the ESS national team and based on a detailed analysis of the non-response cases and the incidences reported by the interviewed in the contact form.

Improving social measurements: The experience of the ESS first rounds in Spain

With the two aims of monitoring social change and improving social measurement, the European Social Survey is now closing its third round. This paper shows how the accumulated experience of the two first rounds has been used to validate the questionnaire, better adapt the sampling design to the country characteristics and efficiently commit fieldwork in Spain. For example, the dynamic character of the population nowadays makes necessary to estimated design effects at each round from the data of the previous round. The paper also demonstrates how, starting with a response rate of 52% at first round, a 66% response rate is achieved at the third round thanks to an extensive quality control conducted by the polling agency and the ESS national team and based on a detailed analysis of the non-response cases and the incidences reported by the interviewed in the contact form.

Development of advanced silicon radiation detectors for high energy physics and medical imaging

The 1st chapter of this work presents the different experiments and collaborations in which I am involved during my PhD studies of Physics. Following those descriptions, the 2nd chapter is dedicated to how the radiation affects the silicon sensors, as well as some experimental measurements carried out at CERN (Geneve, Schwitzerland) and IFIC (Valencia, Spain) laboratories. Besides the previous investigation results, this chapter includes the most recent scientific papers appeared in the latest RD50 (Research & Development #50) Status Report, published in January 2007, as well as some others published this year. The 3rd and 4th are dedicated to the simulation of the electrical behavior of solid state detectors. In chapter 3 are reported the results obtained for the illumination of edgeless detectors irradiated at different fluences, in the framework of the TOSTER Collaboration. The 4th chapter reports about simulation design, simulation and fabrication of a novel 3D detector developed at CNM for ions detection in the future ITER fusion reactor. This chapter will be extended with irradiation simulations and experimental measurements in my PhD Thesis.

Estudi i aplicació de llibreries de física per a motors de videojocs

En el món dels videojocs el realisme és un punt molt important a tenir en compte ja que dónamés sensació a l’usuari d’estar immers en el videojoc. Això passa en part per aconseguir realisme en la dinàmica dels objectes i fer que aquests segueixin les lleis de la física de Newton. Per això s’han desenvolupat diverses llibreries que s’anomenen “motors de física” (physics engines), que empren variables com la massa, la velocitat, la fricció i la resistència del vent. Els objectius d’aquest projecte seran l’estudi de diferents llibreries físiques existents, la seva comparació i com s’integren en els motors de jocs. A més a més , la generació de contingut amb comportament que respongui a les funcions definides a aquestes llibreries no és trivial i per aquest motiu també es desenvoluparà una aplicació per generar murs de forma semiautomàtica que respongui a impactes. Per assolir aquests objectius caldrà: d’ una banda, comparar els cossos rígids, unions i funcionament en general de diferents llibreries físiques: Newton Game Dynamics, NVIDIA PhysX Technology, Open Dynamics Engine, Bullet PhysicsLibrary, Tokamak Physics Engine i Havok i d’ altra banda, implementar una aplicació que donant-li una imatge en planta d’una paret o conjunt de parets en format vectorial i les mides d’un maó, generi murs que puguin reaccionar de forma adequada quan rebin l’impacte d’una massa determinada. L’aplicació s’implementarà en C++ i amb l’entorn de desenvolupament Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. La visualització serà amb OpenGL

What made him change? an individual and national analysis of men's participation in housework in 26 countries

We offer new evidence on multi-level determinants of the gender division of housework. Using data from the 2004 European Social Survey (ESS) for 26 European, we study the micro and macro-level factors which increase the likelihood of men doing an equal or greater share of housework than their female partners. A sample of 11,915 young men and women is analysed with a multi-level logistic regression in order to test at individual level the classic relative-income, time-availability and gender-role values, and a new couple conflict hypothesis. At individual level we find significant relationships between relative resources, values, couple's disagreement, and the division of housework which support more economic dependency than "doing gender" perspectives. At the macro-level, we find important composition effects and also support for gender empowerment, family model and social stratification explanations of cross-country differences.

The Effect of occupational sex-composition on earnings: job-specialisation, sex-role attitudes and the division of domestic-labour in Spain

Important theoretical controversies remain unresolved in the literatire on occupational sex-segregation and the gender wage-gap. A useful way of summarising these controversies is viewing them as a debate between - cultural -socialisation. The paper discusses these theories in detail and carries out a preliminary test of the relative explanatory performance of some of their most consequential predictions. This is done by drawing on the Spanish sample of the second wave of the European Social Survey, ESS. The empirical analysis of ESS data illustrates the notable analytical pay-offs that can stem from using rich individual-level indicators, but also exemplifies the statistical llimitations generated by small sample size and high rates of non-response. Empirical results should, therefore, be taken as preliminary. They seem to suggest that the effect of occupational sex-segregation on wages could be explicable by workers' sex-role attitutes, their relative input in domestic production and the job-specific human capital requirements of their jobs. Of these three factors, job-specialisation seeems clearly the most important one.

Political mobilisation and models of trade unionism : Southern Europe in comparative perspective

The relationship between union membership and political mobilization has been studied under many perspectives, but quantitative cross-national analyses have been hampered by the absence of international comparable survey data until the first round of the European Social Survey (ESS-2002) was made available. Using different national samples from this survey in four moments of time (2002, 2004 and 2006), our paper provides evidence of cross-country divergence in the empirical association between political mobilisation and trade union membership. Cross-national differences in union members’ political mobilization, we argue, can be explained by the existence of models of unionism that in turn differ with respect to two decisive factors: the institutionalisation of trade union activity and the opportunities left-wing parties have available for gaining access to executive power.

Design effect and interviewer effects: Evidence from the Spanish ESS3-2006 Data

In 2007 the first Quality Enhancement Meeting on sampling in the European SocialSurvey (ESS) took place. The discussion focused on design effects and inteviewereffects in face-to-face interviews. Following the recomendations of this meeting theSpanish ESS team studied the impact of interviewers as a new element in the designeffect in the response s variance using the information of the correspondent SampleDesign Data Files. Hierarchical multilevel and cross-classified multilevel analysis areconducted in order to estimate the amount of responses variation due to PSU and tointerviewers for different questions in the survey. Factor such as the age of theinterviewer, gender, workload, training and experience and respondent characteristicssuch as age, gender, renuance to participate and their possible interactions are alsoincluded in the analysis of some specific questions like trust in politicians and trustin legal system . Some recomendations related to future sampling designs and thecontents of the briefing sessions are derived from this initial research.

Algunos tipos de cistáceas béticas y rifeñas de los herbarios BC, MA y MAF.

We indicate nomenclatural types (lectotypes and isolectotypes) for 10 taxa of the genus Cistus, Halimium and Helianthemum described from Andalusia and northern Morocco by botanists of the first half of the 20th century such as Font Quer, Pau, Cuatrecasas and Sennen. These types are conserved in the Spanish herbaria mentioned above, and some of them belong to the exsiccatae"Iter maroccanum" and"Plantes d"Espagne". Keywords: Nomenclatural types, Cistaceae, Andalusia, northern Morocco.

Acerca de los tipos de dos Veronica rifeñas.

Hace unos años, se publicó en esta misma sección una nota sobre Veronica rosea (Soriano, 1996), en la que se anticipaba el tratamiento de este taxón en la checklist de la fl ora del norte de Marruecos (Valdés & al. 2002; Soriano, 2002). Entre otras cosas, se formalizaba en ella la descripción de V. rosea subsp. atlantica var. macrantha, propuesta por Pau como V. rosea var. macrantha y distribuida por Font Quer en el Iter maroccanum de 1930, aunque sin la diagnosis correspondiente.

Acerca de los tipos de dos Veronica rifeñas.

Hace unos años, se publicó en esta misma sección una nota sobre Veronica rosea (Soriano, 1996), en la que se anticipaba el tratamiento de este taxón en la checklist de la fl ora del norte de Marruecos (Valdés & al. 2002; Soriano, 2002). Entre otras cosas, se formalizaba en ella la descripción de V. rosea subsp. atlantica var. macrantha, propuesta por Pau como V. rosea var. macrantha y distribuida por Font Quer en el Iter maroccanum de 1930, aunque sin la diagnosis correspondiente.

Acerca de los tipos de dos Veronica rifeñas.

Hace unos años, se publicó en esta misma sección una nota sobre Veronica rosea (Soriano, 1996), en la que se anticipaba el tratamiento de este taxón en la checklist de la fl ora del norte de Marruecos (Valdés & al. 2002; Soriano, 2002). Entre otras cosas, se formalizaba en ella la descripción de V. rosea subsp. atlantica var. macrantha, propuesta por Pau como V. rosea var. macrantha y distribuida por Font Quer en el Iter maroccanum de 1930, aunque sin la diagnosis correspondiente.

Acerca de los tipos de dos Veronica rifeñas.

Hace unos años, se publicó en esta misma sección una nota sobre Veronica rosea (Soriano, 1996), en la que se anticipaba el tratamiento de este taxón en la checklist de la fl ora del norte de Marruecos (Valdés & al. 2002; Soriano, 2002). Entre otras cosas, se formalizaba en ella la descripción de V. rosea subsp. atlantica var. macrantha, propuesta por Pau como V. rosea var. macrantha y distribuida por Font Quer en el Iter maroccanum de 1930, aunque sin la diagnosis correspondiente.

Acerca de los tipos de dos Veronica rifeñas.

Hace unos años, se publicó en esta misma sección una nota sobre Veronica rosea (Soriano, 1996), en la que se anticipaba el tratamiento de este taxón en la checklist de la fl ora del norte de Marruecos (Valdés & al. 2002; Soriano, 2002). Entre otras cosas, se formalizaba en ella la descripción de V. rosea subsp. atlantica var. macrantha, propuesta por Pau como V. rosea var. macrantha y distribuida por Font Quer en el Iter maroccanum de 1930, aunque sin la diagnosis correspondiente.

Acerca de los tipos de dos Veronica rifeñas.

Hace unos años, se publicó en esta misma sección una nota sobre Veronica rosea (Soriano, 1996), en la que se anticipaba el tratamiento de este taxón en la checklist de la fl ora del norte de Marruecos (Valdés & al. 2002; Soriano, 2002). Entre otras cosas, se formalizaba en ella la descripción de V. rosea subsp. atlantica var. macrantha, propuesta por Pau como V. rosea var. macrantha y distribuida por Font Quer en el Iter maroccanum de 1930, aunque sin la diagnosis correspondiente.