Data Analysis and Statistics

The first is Econometrics of Health, which may be defined as the application of econometrics and other quantitative approximations to the Economy of Health. It is not merely the application of the methods of econometrics to data coming from the area of health science, but to its individual character having developed and brought new and specific statistical instruments to bear in analysing new problems.

Among its applications are the following:

1. Utilisation of health services.

2. Personal and territorial inequality in health.

3. Management of health services.

4. Analysis of the relation between occupation and temporary incapacity.

5. Prescription, utilisation, and cost reduction in the treatment of arterial hypertension.

6. Estimation of the direct costs of obesity in the Girona health region.

Among the methodological aspects are the following:

1. Lineal and additive generalized models.

2. Non-parametrical statistics.

3. Mixed models.

4. Longitudinal models.

5. Analysis of multi-variations of survival.

6. Spatial statistics.

7. Geographic analysis

8. Meta-analysis.

The second area in order of importance is that of statistics, econometrics, and quality of inquiry data, in which various statistical aspects are developed in a more theoretically methodological way. Firstly the models of structural equations with latent variables, where an attempt is made to estimate relations between variables measured with error. Our research aims to extend the methodology to deal with ordinal measurement scales, missing data, hierarchical structures and non-lineal influences. This approach leads to a more general improvement in the design and analysis of the problems that we were previously applying to measuring the quality of life, the quality of products and services, and the social networks (type and level of the links between people and institutions), the values and welfare of children, and the economic evaluation of the risks of suffering illness.

Among the applications of this approach are the following:

1. Short term effects of contamination of the atmosphere in addition to other

environmental considerations affecting health.

2. Analysis of the factors determining the apparition of drug-resisting

bacteria.

3. Appraisal of the quality of the service sector.

4. Social capital and performance.

GRECS is a founder-member of the international network ‘Network on Social Capital and Performance (INSOC), together with Universität Giesen, University of Ulster of Jordanstown, Universiteit Groningen, Univerza u Ljubljani, and Zentrum für Umfragen Methoden un Analysen.

http://www.psw.rug.ac.be/popmeth/home/GSRM/insoc.htm

Examples of the more theoretic methodologies may be cited as follows:

1. Use of Mixed Generalised Lineal Models (GLMM) as an alternative to the

non-normal responses of space-temporal modelling.

2. Inquiry methodology.

3. Models of structural equations with variable latents.

4. Models with variable limited dependent.

5. Multi-level models.

Research projects, transfer of knowledge activities, international projection of the Group, together with their national and international publications, as well as their teaching experience and organisation of activities may be seen by reference to the following addresses:

http://www.udg.edu/fcee/economia/catala/grecs.htm

http://www.udg.edu/fcee/economia/english/grecs.htm