Search results

The purpose of this paper is to anonymize web server log files used in e‐commerce web mining processes.

The paper has applied statistical disclosure control (SDC) techniques to achieve its goal. More precisely, it has introduced the micro‐aggregation of web access logs.

The experiments show that the proposed technique provides good results in general, but it is especially outstanding when dealing with relatively small websites.

As in all SDC techniques there is always a trade‐off between privacy and utility or, in other words, between disclosure risk and information loss. In this proposal, it has borne this issue in mind, providing k‐anonymity, while preserving acceptable information accuracy.

Web server logs are valuable information used nowadays for user profiling and general data‐mining analysis of a website in e‐commerce and e‐services. This proposal allows anonymizing such logs, so they can be safely outsourced to other companies for marketing purposes, stored for further analysis, or made publicly available, without risking customer privacy.

Current solutions to the problem presented here are very poor and scarce. They are normally reduced to the elimination of sensitive information from query strings of URLs in general. Moreover, to its knowledge, the use of SDC techniques has never been applied to the anonymization of web logs.

Population censuses collect socio-demographic and economic information regularly and in an institutionalized manner. The decision of what topics to include in their questionnaires reflects political priorities, but also it is a materialization of symbolic power (Bourdieu, 1991; Loveman, 2005). Gender practices – including budgeting, policy-making, implementation and monitoring of programs – depend significantly on census results. Understanding the institutional dynamics of public statistics sheds light on structural obstacles to exercise gender rights. To study this phenomenon, the authors look at the last century of the Brazilian and Ecuadorian censuses. The research provides a better understanding about the process of including or rejecting questions related to gender, specifically the arguments used in the process of selecting questions. Brazil and Ecuador were chosen because of the different profiles of each of their statistical institutions. The Brazilian institute, IBGE, is a larger, stable and semi-autonomous statistical office; Brazil has conducted population censuses since the nineteenth century. The Ecuadorian institute, INEC, is a smaller and more politically dependent statistical office; it has conducted population censuses since 1950.

Using archival analysis within the questionnaires and interviewing key demographers, activists and statisticians in both countries, the authors argue that the presence or absence of gender questions in the Brazilian and Ecuadorian censuses is historically and politically contingent. In contrast to the dominant narrative that suggests that changes in the vision of public statistics is correlated with the modernization of the state, it appears that the statistical visibility of gender issues in each society does not follow a linear path.

Taking as reference a sample of around a hundred biographical materials on entrepreneurs in Mexico and Colombia, the purpose of this chapter is dual. Both to show the relevance and varied modalities that the biographical approach has enjoyed in business history research since the 1990s, and to display the intrinsic potential this modality of scholarship entails for entrepreneurship endeavors. In particular, it discusses the prospects to incorporate this body of empirical works into the large Latin American audience attending undergraduate, graduate and executive education programs in business, economic history and related fields. The chapter is organized into three sections. The first two are devoted to illustrate relevant patterns in the entrepreneurial trajectory of individuals and entrepreneurial families studied in each of the two countries under consideration. The last section identifies some conceptual issues that may impact current debates on Latin American business development as exemplified in recent business and economic history journal venues and scholarly conferences.

Volume 18 of Research on Economic Inequality contains selected papers from the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality's Third Annual Meeting (July, 2009) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The volume collects eleven papers, five of which focus on inequality and poverty in Latin America. The Latin American papers address basic needs and poverty, multidimensional poverty, educational mobility, poverty dynamics, and the role of cash transfer programs in addressing inequality. The second half of Volume 18 collects other papers by ECINEQ members. The topics covered include taxation and inequality, evaluating poverty orderings, testing for mobility dominance, measuring relative deprivation, estimation of the costs of maintaining a child, and evaluating nutritional inequality.

Based on a theoretical framework grounded in the social-cognitive theory and its derivative the social-cognitive career theory, the main purpose of this paper is to examine the role of entrepreneurial exposure in moderating the relationship between self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention in the presence of different levels of outcome expectations.

Using a sample of 643 secondary students from Colombia, the authors tested the validity and reliability of scales used to measure the main constructs of the socio-cognitive career theory and used the construct of entrepreneurial exposure to examine contingent hypotheses using a four-step linear regression analysis.

The study results suggest that although the main social-cognitive career variables (self-efficacy and outcome expectation) and entrepreneurial exposure directly influence the formation of entrepreneurial intention and thus support previous findings, the authors also discover a new configuration of (interacting) antecedents. While on the one hand, even a low level of entrepreneurial exposure leads to a significant increase in the entrepreneurial intention of secondary students with high outcome expectation and high self-efficacy; on the other hand, high entrepreneurial exposure leads to a decrease in entrepreneurial intention among students with high entrepreneurial expectation and high self-efficacy.

The main implication of the study findings is although entrepreneurial exposure is beneficial for fostering entrepreneurial intention among secondary students, a high level of entrepreneurial exposure can have a detrimental effect especially among those with high self-efficacy and outcome expectations.

The paper suggests implications and suggestions for educators to foster the development of entrepreneurial intentions among students.

This study provides empirical evidence on the formation of entrepreneurial intention in a new setting. In addition, it improves one’s understanding of the main tenets of social-cognitive career theory by taking into account an important environment factor that can have a contrasting impact on the formation on entrepreneurial intention among adolescents.

The study aims to provide relevant information on the educational processes experienced by university students in Spain during the period of compulsory confinement. To this end, the key factors of the emergency educational model implemented by the country's universities have been analysed.

The study investigated, through qualitative, exploratory research and 30 in-depth interviews, how university students have lived the process of change to alternative forms of education during the crisis, what training experiences stand out and what factors related to virtual education they identify as relevant keys.

Participants usually focus on three main topics: (1) The impacts of changes in training development with regard to methodologies and forms of assessment; (2) The facilities and difficulties in this new modality of online training; and (3) The consequences of the crisis on higher education in the medium and long term.

Students participating in the study offer relevant and critical information on the adaptations developed by Spanish universities during the Coronavirus crisis. This information can be fundamental for the conscious decision making of the institutions, so that they can develop educational processes more adequate to the needs and possibilities of the university students in times of crisis.

The main objective of the research is to propose a method to assess the reliability of hospitals' internal logistics distribution.

A structured methodology was defined in five stages: (1) data collection and current state mapping; (2) future state design; (3) identification of the uncertainties and sources of variation; (4) reliability analysis of the proposed future state and (5) identification and prioritization of improvements.

Results show shortcomings of the future state design and propose solutions to obtain a state that is more realistic and possible to perform. Subsequently, the feasibility of these improvements was analysed in order to be implemented in a real context, searching and identifying different uncertainty sources occurring inside the system.

Studies that have addressed hospital's internal logistics are scarce. Such gap highlights the need for this research developments that address the reliability enhancement in hospitals internal logistics.