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Education is seen as a resource at a global level but is currently considered to be in crisis in many parts of the world. This constitutes a significant drawback in terms of humanity's prosperity and well-being since education is the key not only to an educated workforce but also to humane, collaborative, and caring societies. Even within this dim landscape, there are certain educational systems that defy the odds and perform significantly higher than their otherwise comparable systems. This paper proposes using an unusual lens for educational policy comparative studies, that of positive deviance, to aid us in progressing towards a more stable educational state of affairs. Using a positive deviance methodology, which focuses on learning what is working well in systems that defy and overcome substantial challenges, this study investigates the patterns, attitudes, and actions of three selected cases: Massachusetts as a positive deviant in the US, Estonia as a positive deviant in Europe, and Castile-Leon as a positive deviant in Spain. The purpose is, by analysing educational policies, laws, and other related documents, to find commonalities that explain why these systems outperform others. The results of the comparative analysis pinpoint areas and strategies informative to those leading struggling educational systems, such as a strong commitment to equity and justice, placing teachers at the centre of reforms, using assessment as a tool for process monitoring and summative inquiry, and making preschool education accessible to all.

This paper reports on the perceptions of Spanish academic libraries regarding Open Science (OS). OS is irrupting into academia and academic librarians need to support researchers. On the other side, researchers need to be ready to change their scientific behaviour in relation to publications and research data. We conducted a focus group with 8 academic librarians. We also sent a survey to (N = 67) academic libraries, obtaining a response rate of 71.6%. In the survey, we asked for drivers and constraints for OS services as well as for any training taking place. Our results show that facilitators are the system relationships (SD = 4.74) and internal promotion of systems relationships (SD = 4.54). In relation to the level of knowledge of OS, both researchers (SD = 3.27) and librarians have a high level in terms of the OA area (SD = 4.15) but little development of the rest of the components of OS. On the other hand, in relation to training librarians, results indicated that OA (SD = 4.79), Open Data (SD = 4.79) and new evaluation models (SD = 4.79) should be part of the training for researchers. The results of the focus group reinforce some of the indicators mentioned. We conclude that academic libraries may train researchers in OS through the acquisition of new skills and trainers-training and with the strategic support of the university. We argue that academic incentives and a change in research accreditation are also needed to shift researchers' perceptions in relation to OS.

This paper analyses the reliability and accuracy of the relationships between migration and employment status when estimated using a linked data set. The analysis will be carried out using a new source, the "Labour and Geographical Mobility Statistics," which is provided by the Spanish Statistical Office. This statistic is constructed by an exact matching procedure, linking the "Labour Force Survey" with the Official "Population Register." The findings reveal that in order to accurately study geographic labour mobility, timing and geographical coherence between the two data sets must exist. If this is not the case, causality relations between the labour market and geographical mobility cannot be properly analysed. Although our analysis refers to the microdata quality and internal coherence of this new Spanish statistic, our conclusion can be extended to any linked data set for studying geographic labour mobility, including the population censuses mainly based on administrative data.

Copyright of Visual Review is the property of Eagora Science and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The aim of this paper is to use Google data to predict Spanish mortgage market activity during the period from January 2004 to January 2019. Thus, we collect monthly Google data for the keyword hipoteca, the Spanish expression for mortgage, and then, we perform a regression and an out-of-sample analysis. We find evidence that the use of Google data significantly improves prediction accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the presence of English and Spanish-English store front signs in different regions of Spain. A list of shops, collected from an online search through the Spanish páginas amarillas ‘yellow pages', were researched, documented and photographed. Any shop within the area of those on the original list was also added to the data collection. The three main questions of focus for this paper were to determine whether the English or Spanish English store front signs were: 1) observed only in large cities or tourist areas, 2) used only on certain types of establishments (i.e. those catering to tourism or upscale neighborhoods), and 3) witnessed only on international franchises. The results indicated that, similar to other studies on store front signs throughout the world, English in Spain's linguistic landscape is widely visible and appears to be a result of trendiness rather than a means for global communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of El Profesional de la Información is the property of EPI SCP and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of International Journal of Climatology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista de Economía Aplicada is the property of Revista de Economia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista de Economía Aplicada is the property of Revista de Economia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista de Economía Aplicada is the property of Revista de Economia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We aim to assess the ability of two alternative forecasting procedures to predict quarterly national account (QNA) aggregates. The application of Box–Jenkins techniques to observed data constitutes the basis of traditional ARIMA and transfer function methods (BJ methods). The alternative procedure exploits the information of unobserved high- and low-frequency components of time series (UC methods). An informal examination of empirical evidence suggests that the relationships between QNA aggregates and coincident indicators are often clearly different for diverse frequencies. Under these circumstances, a Monte Carlo experiment shows that UC methods significantly improve the forecasting accuracy of BJ procedures if coincident indicators play an important role in such predictions. Otherwise (i.e., under univariate procedures), BJ methods tend to be more accurate than the UC alternative, although the differences are small. We illustrate these findings with several applications from the Spanish economy with regard to industrial production, private consumption, business investment and exports. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The community structure of the macrobenthic (>1 mm) fauna of an intertidal soft-bottom estuary, the Ría de Foz (Galicia, Northwest Spain) was investigated on 99 occasions during June, September and December 1984 and March 1985. The infaunal data were subjected to classification and ordination techniques. The analyses indicated that sediment characteristics (grain size, percentage silt-clay and organic-matter content) and tidal height are the most important factors governing the distribution and abundance of the intertidal communities. Three faunal assemblages were identified and examined in terms of species dominance, constancy and fidelity. In the clean sands of the outer estuary two main assemblages were distinguished; one, corresponding to the 'boreal Lusitanian Tellina community', inhabited the middle and lower tidal levels; the other, typical of a biocoenosis of sands and slightly muddy mediolittoral sands, inhabited the upper tidal level. The third benthic assemblage occupied the muddy sands and mud of the inner estuary and displayed some features in common with the Cardium edule-Scrobicularia community described by Thorson. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Real-World Data (RWD) studies provide important insights in disease epidemiology, in real clinical populations, with long follow-up periods. The aim of the present study was to describe the epidemiology of schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SD) during an 8-year period in Spain. Methods: A retrospective cohort of subjects aged 15 to 64 years was followed-up using electronic healthcare databases of the Valencia region (2008–2015). SD cases included outpatient and inpatient settings (ICD 9 codes 295.XX). Prevalence of SD was assessed. Incidence rate (IR) in the subpopulation aged between 15 and 34 years was also provided. Healthcare utilization (HCU) rates, including outpatient, specialists, hospitalizations and antipsychotic dispensations were estimated. Results: The cohort included 3,976,071 subjects; 24,749 of them had a prevalent diagnosis of SD. The overall prevalence for SD was 6.2 per 1000 persons. SD were 76% more prevalent in men than women. IR in the subpopulation aged between 15 and 34 years was 50.25 per 100,000 persons years and was more than 2 times higher for men than for women. 83.4% of the overall outpatient visits from the cohort of patients were related to SD. The 21,095 overall hospitalizations with the SD code resulted in 286,139 days of hospitalization, with a median of 4 days (IQR: 1.6–9.2) per person-year. 93.2% of subjects diagnosed with SD were ever treated with some antipsychotic drug during the study period, and 70% of the patients were ever treated with antipsychotic polypharmacy. Conclusions: This large population-based study using RWD provides novel and recent information SD in a southern European country. The prevalence and IR of SD showed is greater than previously published and higher in men than in women. The fact of having used a large arsenal of electronic data (including outpatient and inpatient) for 8 years may have influenced. SD represents high burden and healthcare utilization. Contrary to guidelines recommendations the majority of patients were ever treated with antipsychotic polypharmacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of El Profesional de la Información is the property of EPI SCP and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The aim of this article was to examine the role of social networks in the fostering of volunteering as a social activity among older adults. Two different data sources were used. First, a secondary analysis was conducted of 2,057 Spanish respondents to the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, previously published in 2013. The features of the social networks of volunteers and non-volunteers (network structure, interaction and quality) were analyzed. Second, a questionnaire was administered to 152 older volunteers in Spain to determine the role played by social networks in the recruitment of older people to volunteer work by looking at which network members had suggested volunteering, among other variables. The analysis of the two datasets found that the low participation of older Spanish people in volunteering is related to the structure of their social networks. While the social networks of older Spanish people are mostly comprised of family members, recruitment to volunteering tends to happen through relationships with friends and acquaintances rather than relatives. Future research in this area should consider the impact of gender on the uptake of volunteering and address other issues such as the role of social networks in the benefits that people get from volunteering. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Commitment and satisfaction in business-to-business relationships have a great interest from a marketing perspective (Abdul-Muhmin, 2005). However, there is little relationship marketing research on franchising to determine the key drivers of franchisee performance (Chiou, Hsieh, & Yang, 2004; Garcia, Sanzo, & Trespalacios, 2005). Therefore, we analyse the influence of relational norms and interdependence structure between franchisor and franchisee on commitment and the effect of these three variables on franchisee satisfaction. Data come from a survey of 102 franchisees operating in the Spanish franchise sector. Franchisee satisfaction is partially explained by the development of relational norms, commitment, and strong interdependence between franchisor and franchisee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe the process and tools that we have used to generate and publish the BTN100 Linked Dataset, based on the original data from the Spanish Topographic Base (1:100.000 scale) from the Spanish Instituto Geográfico Nacional. We have taken into account the limitations and lessons learned from our initial experience on the generation and publication of Linked Data from a range of geographical sources in Spain, in 2010, and we have now refined the process in order to facilitate: declarative mappings for the transformations from existing open data (shapefiles), automation of transformations whenever there are changes in the original data sources, version control, and alignment with INSPIRE URIs. As a result of this transformation and publication process we have also updated the reference ontology for geographical features and aligned with general ontologies such as GeoSPARQL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]