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There is growing recognition of the important role menstrual health plays in achieving health, education, and gender equity. Yet, stigmatisation and taboo remain present and negative emotions like fear and shame dominate the narrative when speaking about periods. This paper analyses how formal and informal menstrual education is received in Spain, to understand the role of menstrual health literacy in the way menstruation is experienced, and to identify what information would be useful to integrate into formal menstrual education. An online survey with more than 4000 participants (aged between 14 and 80, both people who will/do/have previously menstruate/d and those who do not menstruate) was conducted. Data was gathered using the digital platform Typeform, descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were performed with SPSS software and qualitative data was thematically analysed using Nvivo. Many participants declared not having received sufficient information on menstruation prior to menarche, particularly about how to physically manage it. Furthermore, negative emotions like shame, worry, and fear were recurrently reported to describe menarche; this has not changed between generations. Interestingly, we saw an increase in stress and sadness with an increase in perceived knowledge of the reproductive role of menstruation. We did observe a reduction in negative emotions when people who menstruate perceived they had sufficient information on how to manage their first bleeding. It is recommended that menstrual education beyond reproductive biology, particularly including how to physically manage periods, is integrated into school curricula. Menstrual education of everyone – including those who do not menstruate—can improve how periods are experienced in Spain.

Gender studies have highlighted how policies and actions that are not drafted and planned with a gender perspective tend to produce a gender bias. Climate policies are not an exception. Measures to mitigate and adapt cities to climate change might lead to undesired outcomes regarding gender equality or, in contrast, may help to improve equality. Ideally, cities should prioritise actions that aim to reduce their carbon footprint but also help promote gender equality. The aim is to facilitate the inclusion of gender perspective in the 100 Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities by 2030 European Mission. We propose a Multicriteria Decision-Making Method to assess urban policies and relate them to climate and gender criteria. We describe urban decarbonisation policies with non-negative gender outcomes and compare their impact when using climate and gender criteria. The objective is to analyse how the prioritisation of actions varies from different perspectives: one taking into account the field of expertise of the different experts and the other taking into account the different typologies of criteria separately. A DEMATEL-ANP technique is used to determine how policies contribute to climate action and gender equality. Experts in different areas and city planning respond to the DEMATEL-ANP model by comparing and relating criteria and actions. The results show which policies have a significant potential to reduce cities’ carbon footprint and increase gender equality. Prioritisation of policies changes when only gender criteria or climate criteria are considered. Regarding the former, it can be concluded that gender criteria will contribute to closing the gender gap while having a widening impact on decarbonisation. Nevertheless, including gender criteria is not enough to avoid bias, and multidisciplinary teams must participate in the decision-making process., Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public., Energie and Industrie

Gender studies have highlighted how policies and actions that are not drafted and planned with a gender perspective tend to produce a gender bias. Climate policies are not an exception. Measures to mitigate and adapt cities to climate change might lead to undesired outcomes regarding gender equality or, in contrast, may help to improve equality. Ideally, cities should prioritise actions that aim to reduce their carbon footprint but also help promote gender equality. We propose a Multicriteria Decision-Making Method to assess urban policies and relate them to climate and gender criteria. We describe policies for urban decarbonisation that have a non-negative outcome from a gender perspective, and compare their impact according to climate and gender criteria. To do so, we use a DEMATEL-ANP technique to determine how policies contribute to climate action and gender equality. Experts in the different areas and city planning respond to the DANP model by comparing and relating criteria and actions. Our results show which policies have a significant potential to reduce cities’ carbon footprint and increase gender equality. Furthermore, comparisons are carried out to analyse on the one hand how the results differ when only gender or climate criteria models are considered, and on the other, how they differ depending on the expertise field. Regarding the former, we were able to conclude that the inclusion of gender criteria contributes to a more socially equitable decarbonisation.

Consumer behavior knowledge is essential to designing successful products. However, measuring subjective perceptions affecting this behavior is a complex issue that depends on many factors. Identifying visual cues elicited by the product’s appearance is key in many cases. Marketing research on this topic has produced different approaches to the question. This paper proposes the use of Noise-Based Reverse Correlation techniques in the identification of product form features carrying a particular semantic message. This technique has been successfully utilized in social sciences to obtain prototypical images of faces representing social stereotypes from different judgements. In this work, an exploratory study on subcompact cars is performed by applying Noise-Based Reverse Correlation to identify relevant form features conveying a sports car image. The results provide meaningful information about the car attributes involved in communicating this idea, thus validating the use of the technique in this particular case. More research is needed to generalize and adapt Noise-Based Reverse Correlation procedures to different product scenarios and semantic concepts.

This paper proposes a state-of-the-art methodology for the analysis of stakeholders and their role and performance related to SMEs in the mining industry in the Chilean region of Coquimbo. The relationships between the actors are studied and prioritized according to their support network position. An individual index for each actor based on their influence on solving problems is provided. The social network analysis was used to know the influence of the actors in the sector through the centrality measures. Furthermore, a methodology to measure stakeholders’ influence based on the multicriteria method analytic network process approach is proposed. Both methods are used to identify the main stakeholders, study their relationships, and identify the most influential actors involved in executing strategies to boost the sector performance. The results show that the network remains cohesive thanks to certain actors, while the links between private actors must be strengthened; likewise, some public actors should assume a more proactive role in dealing with the problems of the sector.

Irrigation water use efficiency, the small size of the orchards, and part-time farmers are major issues for Spanish citriculture. How should irrigation water use efficiency be assessed? Does irrigation water use efficiency improve when increasing the size of the orchards? Are full-time farmers more efficient in irrigation water use than part-time ones? To address these three questions, we propose to apply a new multicriteria approach based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) technique and the participation of a group of experts. A new synthetic irrigation efficiency index (IEI) was proposed and tested using data from an irrigation community (IC) and a cooperative of farmers in the East of Spain. The results showed that the size of the orchards had no relation with the IEI scoring but full-time farmers tended to have better IEI scores and, thus, were more efficient. These results were obtained from a sample of 24 orchards of oranges, navelina variety, growing in a very similar environment, and agronomical characteristics. The proposed methodology can be a useful benchmarking tool for improving the irrigation water management in other ICs taking into account the issues related to farm data sharing recorded during the case study.

Based on the appearance of their faces, we attribute to people personality traits, moods, capacities, or competences. This unconscious process plays a central role in our everyday decisions and how we choose partners or our favorite candidate. This work is the first approach to the analysis of the influence of appearance-driven judgments of faces in the project management field. The main objective of this study was to obtain an approximate image of the general mental prototype of the face of a project manager using noise-based reverse correlation. The obtained image shows the features of the faces that drive the perception of a good project manager. The face shows very high average scores for all the competences recognized in the IPMA Individual Competence Baseline when assessed by a sample of project management practitioners. From these results, it can be stated that people have clearly defined prototypes of facial features that convey the perception of being a competent project manager, and this finding may have implications in the project management field.

The importance of participation in academic conferences is well known for members of the scientific community. It is not only for the feedback and the improvement of the work, it is also about career development, building networks and increasing visibility. Nevertheless, women continue to be under-represented in these academic events and even more so in the most visible positions such as speaking roles. This paper presents the development of a tool based on performance indicators, which will allow monitoring and evaluating gender roles and inequalities in academic conferences in order to tackle the underrepresentation of women. The study identifies relevant perspectives (participation, organizational structure and attitudes) and designs specific lists of performance indicators for each of them. The tool is based on a combination of two multicriteria techniques, Analytic Hierarchy Process and Analytic Hierarchy Process Sort, and a qualitative analysis based on in-depth interviews and information gathered from a focus group. The use of the AHP multi-criteria decision technique has allowed us to weight the indicators according to the opinion of several experts, and with them to be able to generate from these weightings composite indicators for each of the three dimensions. The most relevant indicators were for the participation dimension. Additionally, the tool developed has been applied to an academic conference which has been monitored in real time. The results are shown as a traffic light visualization approach, where red means bad performance, yellow average performance and green good performance, helping us to present the results for each indicator. Finally, proposals for improvement actions addressed to the red indicators are explained. The work carried out highlights the need to broaden the study of gender equality in academic conferences, not only regarding the participation but also the performance of different roles and functions.

This work approach the use of noise-based inverse correlation analysis technique in the field of industrial product assessment. This technique identifies the elements of an image that contribute in the judgment that an observer makes on it, and has been used especially in face analysis. The proposal of this work is to apply the same technique on product images and verify if it is possible to use it as an evaluation tool that helps identify the formal characteristics of a product that most contribute to its perception. This communication shows the procedure used and the results obtained.

The importance of participation in conferences and events is well known for members of the society. It is not only for the feedback and the personal experience, it is also about career development, building networks and increasing visibility. Nevertheless, women continue to be under-represented in these events and even more so in the most visible positions such as speaking roles. This paper presents the development of a tool based on performance indicators, which will allow monitoring and evaluating gender roles and inequalities in conferences and events in order to tackle the underrepresentation of women. The study identifies relevant perspectives (participation, organizational structure and attitudes) and designs specific lists of performance indicators for each of them. The tool is based on a combination of two multicriteria techniques, Analytic Hierarchy Process and Analytic Hierarchy Process Sort, and a qualitative analysis based on in-depth interviews and information gathered from focus groups. The use of the AHP multi-criteria decision technique has allowed us to weight the indicators according to the opinion of several experts, and with them to be able to generate from these weightings composite indicators for each of the three dimensions. The most relevant indicators were for the participation dimension. Additionally, the tool developed has been applied to a conference which has been monitored in real time. The results are shown as a traffic light visualization approach, where red means bad performance, yellow average performance and green good performance, helping us to present the results for each indicator. Finally, proposals for improvement actions addressed to the red indicators are explained. The work carried out highlights the need to broaden the study of gender equality in conferences and events, not only regarding the participation but also the performance of different roles and functions.

In this work, the effects of using immersive media such as virtual reality on the performance of training programs to avoid ergonomics risks are analyzed. The advance of technology has made it possible to use low-cost portable devices able to generate highly immersive experiences in training programs. The effects of using this kind of device in training programs have been studied in several fields such as industrial security, medicine and surgery, rehabilitation, or construction. However, there is very little research on the effects of using immersive media in training workers to avoid ergonomics risk factors. In this study, we compare the effects of using traditional and immersive media in a training program to avoid three common ergonomics risk factors in industrial environments. Our results showed that using immersive media increases the participant’s engagement during the training. In the same way, the learning contents are perceived as more interesting and useful and are better remembered over time, leading to an increased perception of the ergonomics risks among workers. However, we found that little training was finally transferred to the workplace three months after the training session.

The need of organizations to ensure service levels that impact on customer satisfaction has required the design of collaborative processes among stakeholders involved in inventory decision making. The increase of quantity and variety of items, on the one hand, and demand and customer expectations, on the other hand, are transformed into a greater complexity in inventory management, requiring effective communication and agreements between the leaders of the logistics processes. Traditionally, decision making in inventory management was based on approaches conditioned only by cost or sales volume. These approaches must be overcome by others that consider multiple criteria, involving several areas of the companies and taking into account the opinions of the stakeholders involved in these decisions. Inventory management becomes part of a complex system that involves stakeholders from different areas of the company, where each agent has limited information and where the cooperation between such agents is key for the system’s performance. In this paper, a distributed inventory control approach was used with the decisions allowing communication between the stakeholders and with a multicriteria group decision-making perspective. This work proposes a methodology that combines the analysis of the value chain and the AHP technique, in order to improve communication and the performance of the areas related to inventory management decision making. This methodology uses the areas of the value chain as a theoretical framework to identify the criteria necessary for the application of the AHP multicriteria group decision-making technique. These criteria were defined as indicators that measure the performance of the areas of the value chain related to inventory management and were used to classify ABC inventory of the products according to these selected criteria. Therefore, the methodology allows us to solve inventory management DDM based on multicriteria ABC classification and was

[EN]: Mental disorders and work related musculoskeletal disorders are the main causes of occupational disease and absenteeism. There are two basic ways for its reduction: the reengineering of the productive system and the training of the workers. Previous works showed that the use of new technologies in the teaching-learning processes substantially improves their results. Therefore, using new communication technologies and developing immersive and interactive contents can substantially improve the results. In this work we have compared different didactic media for the training of workers with several levels of immersiveness and interactivity. The results show that using new information and communication technologies in the formative processes of the workers, as well as developing contents with high immersion and interactivity, improve the teaching-learning processes, increasing the interest of the trained worker, their degree of apprehension of knowledge, and the transfer of these knowledge to the real work situation., [ES]: Junto con los desórdenes mentales, los trastornos músculo-esqueléticos con origen en el trabajo constituyen la principal de causa de enfermedad laboral y absentismo en la actualidad. Existen dos vías de actuación básicas para su disminución: la reingeniería del sistema productivo y la formación del trabajador. Existe un elevado consenso científico en que el empleo de TICs en los procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje mejora sustancialmente sus resultados. Así pues, la introducción de nuevas tecnologías de la información y las comunicaciones y el desarrollo de contenidos inmersivos e interactivos pueden mejorar sustancialmente los resultados y la transferencia en la formación de los trabajadores. En este trabajo se han comparado diferentes medios didácticos para la formación de trabajadores con varios niveles de inmersividad e interactividad. Los resultados muestran que la introducción en los procesos formativos de nuevas tecnologías de la información y las comunicaciones, así como contenidos en formatos de alta inmersión e interactividad, mejoran los procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje, aumentando el interés del trabajador formado, su grado de aprehensión de conocimientos, y la transferencia de estos a la situación real de trabajo.

Establishing the best layout configuration for software-generated interfaces and control panels is a complex problem when they include many controls and indicators. Several methods have been developed for arranging the interface elements; however, the results are usually conceptual designs that must be manually adjusted to obtain layouts valid for real situations. Based on these considerations, in this work we propose a new automatized procedure to obtain optimal layouts for software-based interfaces. Eye-tracking and mouse-tracking data collected during the use of the interface is used to obtain the best configuration for its elements. The solutions are generated using a slicing-trees based genetic algorithm. This algorithm is able to obtain really applicable configurations that respect the geometrical restrictions of elements in the interface. Results show that this procedure increases effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction of the users when they interact with the obtained interfaces.

Complex projects require specific project management (PM) competences development. However, while no complex projects have standards that are recognized to guide their management, complex projects do not have guides to deal with their complexity. To lead complex projects to success, this complexity must be measured quantitatively and, in our opinion, project management complexity assessment should be based on existing PM standards. In this work, the main project complexity assessment approaches based on PM standards are analyzed, observing that International Project Management Association (IPMA) approach is the closest to a tool that can be used as a complexity quantitative measurement system. On the other hand, several authors have shown that the inherent complexity of specific kind of projects must be measured in a particular way. The main objective of this research is to propose a project management complexity assessment tool for IT projects, providing a Complexity Index that measures the impact that complexity factors inherent to IT projects have under a specific complexity scenario. The tool combines the use of complexity factors defined by IPMA approach and the use of complexity factors found in the literature to manage inherent complexity of IT projects. All these factors were validated by expert survey and the tool was applied to a study case.

This paper presents the application of the Analytic Network Process for the analysis of the contribution of the third mission action plans to the research transfer policies set by the University Governing Body. The model is applied to the case study of the Technology Transfer Offices (TTO) of the Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain). The paper develops a rigorous decision-making tool that helps TTO managers analyse the effectiveness of TTO activities and their degree of alignment with the institution's objectives. This work considers TTO managers’ qualitative information and value judgments about the activities performed.

In this paper a new approach that uses the alignment of projects with corporate strategic objectives to prioritize project portfolio in an efficient and reliable way is presented. For this purpose, corporate strategic objectives will be used as prioritization criteria to obtain the Relative Alignment Index (RAI) of each project which indicates how close or far each project is from the strategic objectives of the company. The approach presented uses the Analytic Network Process. This technique allows considering the influences among all the elements within the network, that means, the strategic objectives, and specially the projects within a portfolio. The proposed RAI index helps to select the best strategically aligned projects for the organization. The proposed RAI index and its form of evaluation have not previously been considered in the project portfolio literature until now. The research methodology for the development of RAI is based on a combination of a synthesis of the literature across the diverse fields of project management, project alignment, multicriteria decision methods and a parallel analysis of an industrial case study. The use of the proposed RAI index is demonstrated using a rigorous methodology with acceptable complexity which seeks to assist managers of the National Electricity Corporation of Venezuela, recently founded and composed by 13 merging old companies, both public and private, in their yearly resources' assignment on their projects portfolio. The aim being to determine a projects ranking based on their degree of alignment to corporate strategy and on the judgments of a group of experts, such as the management board. The new corporation assumed the challenge of setting strategic directions (Mission, Vision, Values, Strategic objectives, Plans, Programs, etc.) common to all merging companies. This approach with multi-stakeholders support allows managers to strategically allocate resources to each project in a consensual way.

In this paper a new approach to prioritize project portfolio in an efficient and reliable way is presented. The research methodology is based on a combination of a synthesis of the literature across the diverse fields of project management, project alignment, multicriteria decision methods and a parallel analysis of an industrial case study. The paper introduces a rigorous methodology with acceptable complexity which seeks to assist managers of the National Electricity Corporation of Venezuela (Corpoelec) in their yearly resources' assignment on their projects portfolio. The aim being to determine the degree of alignment of each project to corporate strategy based on the judgments of a group of experts on the expected contribution of the projects to the business strategic objectives. The model presented can be used both as a descriptive and a prescriptive model. The approach presented uses project prioritization based on the multi-criteria decisionmaking technique called Analytic Network Process. Thus the corporate strategic objectives will be used as prioritization criteria to obtain the Relative Alignment Index (RAI).

In this paper a new approach to find indicators that can be used to measure companies’ competitiveness and performance in an efficient and reliable way is presented.The aim is to assist managers of companies within a specific industrial sector by providing information about their relative position in the market so as to define better action plans that may improve the company’s performance.The approach combines the use of the Analytic Network Process, a multicriteria decision method, with the Balanced Scorecard. It allows the definition of a number of competitiveness indicators based on the performance and setting of the advertising sector. In this way it is possible to obtain a Competitiveness Index that allows a company to know its relative position with respect to other companies in the sector, and establish a ranking of the companies ordered by their competitiveness level.A case study in the advertising industry of Venezuela is provided. Results show that improvement plans for the agencies analyzed should promote creativity, innovation and the use of new technologies, as a particular form of innovation. These factors were considered to be the most relevant indicators in the advertising sector.The participating experts agreed that the methodology is useful and an improvement over current competitiveness assessment methods.

In this paper a new approach to assess companies' competitiveness performance in an efficient and reliable way is presented. It introduces a rigorous methodology, based on multi-criteria techniques, which seeks to assist managers of companies within a specific industrial sector in providing information about their relative position in order to define improvement action plans. The approach combines the use of the analytic network process (ANP) method with the balanced scorecard (BSC) to achieve competitiveness indicators. The ANP method allows the aggregation of experts judgments on each of the selected indicators used into one company competitiveness index (CCI). To demonstrate the goodness of the methodology, a case study of the plastic sector of Venezuela has been carried out. Three companies have been analysed using the CCI proposed. The participating experts agreed that the methodology is useful and an improvement from current competitiveness measurement techniques. They found the results obtained coherent and the use of resources significantly less than in other methods. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

In this paper a new approach to assess companies' competitiveness performance by means of indicators in an efficient and reliabel way is presented. the approach combines the use of the Analytic Network Process (ANP) method with the Balance Scorecard and the information obtained from sectorial experts during the decision - making process. The ANP method allows the aggregation of experts' judgements on each of the selected indicators used into one company competitiveness index. For that, a comparative study for competitiveness indicators has been carried out among three different business sectors representative of Venezuela.

Universities develop technology transfer mechanisms as the tools required to undertake missions committed to the socioeconomic environment. In this work a new proposal to measure the extent to which the goals or strategic objectives of a university are aligned with the results obtained through its technology transfer mechanisms with the local community is presented. This will enable to perform a diagnosis, by comparing the situation sought by the University Management team (expected case) with the actual one that derives from the application of the plans that implement the technology transfer mechanisms (real case). To achieve this, two different Multicriteria Decision Analysis techniques e.g. Analytic Network Process (ANP) and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) will be used. Both the methodology and the MCDA techniques proposed need to be explained and clarified to the different experts who collaborate in the study, hence the facilitating process, key to the whole procedure, will be analysed in detail. The model proposed in this study is applied to analyse the case of the National University of Colombia – Bogotá Campus. Findings show that the following questions can be answered: (i) How much importance is granted by the University Management to the objectives of the University? (ii) To what extent are the objectives of the university fulfilled by the technology transfer mechanisms to the socioeconomic environment? (iii) Are the objectives of the university aligned with the results achieved through the technology transfer mechanisms? Keywords: Multiple criteria analysis; Analytic network process (ANP); Analytic hierarchy process (AHP); Relation between university and socioeconomic environment.