Qualitative information: a proposal for measurement to quantify eh effects of COVID-19 on the emotional well-being of women and men by means of proximities

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.46661/rev.metodoscuant.econ.empresa.9545

Keywords:

Qualitative scales, COVID-19, Sociological Research Center of Spain, Ordinal proximity measures

Abstract

Emotional well-being is a fundamental factor that directly influences individual productivity from an economic perspective. Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a significant factor that has affected emotional well-being. It has had serious repercussions on economies and societies, as well as significant psychological and social effects on the population, such as anxiety, stress, and transformations in education and employment. To measure these aspects, it is very common to use surveys based on qualitative scales. The most popular method for managing qualitative information involves assigning numerical values to the response categories of these qualitative scales. However, this practice can produce a distorted interpretation of the data, as different results can be obtained depending on how the numerical values are assigned. The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of the coronavirus on certain emotional aspects of women and men in Spain using an indicator based on the concept of ordinal proximity measures. The database used in this study was obtained from the Sociological Research Center of Spain.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Agresti, A. (2010). Analysis of ordinal categorical data. Second edition. John Wiley & Sons.https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470594001

Aguilar-Palacio, I., Carrera-Lasfuentes, P., Sánchez-Recio, R., Alonso, J. P., & Rabanaque, M. J. (2018). Recession, employment and self-rated health: a study on the gender gap. Public Health, 154, 44-50.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2017.10.013

Anglim, J., & Horwood, S. (2021). Effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and big five personality on subjective and psychological well-being. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 12(8), 1527-1537.https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550620983047

Ausín, B., González-Sanguino, C., Castellanos, M. Á., & Muñoz, M. (2021). Gender-related differences in the psychological impact of confinement as a consequence of COVID-19 in Spain. Journal of Gender Studies, 30(1), 29-38.https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2020.1799768

Bambra, C., Riordan, R., Ford, J., & Matthews, F. (2020). The COVID-19 pandemic and health inequalities. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 74(11), 964-968.https://doi.org/10.1136/jech-2020-214401

Bashkansky, E., & Gadrich, T. (2008). Evaluating quality measured on a ternary ordinal scale. Quality and Reliability Engineering International, 24(8), 957-971.https://doi.org/10.1002/qre.946

Bech, P., Olsen, L. R., Kjoller, M., & Rasmussen, N. K. (2003). Measuring well‐being rather than the absence of distress symptoms: a comparison of the SF‐36 Mental Health subscale and the WHO‐Five well‐being scale. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, 12(2), 85-91.https://doi.org/10.1002/mpr.145

Bielderman, A., van der Schans, C. P., van Lieshout, M. R. J., de Greef, M. H., Boersma, F., Krijnen, W. P., & Steverink, N. (2013). Multidimensional structure of the Groningen Frailty Indicator in community-dwelling older people. BMC geriatrics, 13(1), 1-9.https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2318-13-86

Blanchflower, D. G., & Bryson, A. (2024). The female happiness paradox. Journal of Population Economics, 37(1), 16.https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-024-00981-5

Calatrava Requena, J. (1977). El método de "Ridit Analysis" para comparación múltiple de frecuencias muestrales ordenadas en niveles cualitativos: Aplicación al análisis de test y encuestas en sociología. Revista Española de la Opinión Pública, (47), 123-135.https://doi.org/10.2307/40182561

Calderón, C., Jiménez-Fonseca, P., Ferrando, P. J., Jara, C., Lorenzo-Seva, U., Beato, C., & Carmona-Bayonas, A. (2018). Psychometric properties of the Shared Decision-Making Questionnaire (SDM-Q-9) in Oncology practice. International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology, 18(2), 143-151.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijchp.2017.12.001

Cowie, H., & Myers, C. A. (2021). The impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on the mental health and well‐being of children and young people. Children & Society, 35(1), 62-74.https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12430

Dahl, E. (1993). Social inequality in health the role of the healthy worker effect. Social Science & Medicine, 36(8), 1077-1086.https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-9536(93)90126-O

Escudero-Castillo, I., Mato-Díaz, F. J., & Rodriguez-Alvarez, A. (2021). Furloughs, teleworking and other work situations during the COVID-19 lockdown: Impact on mental well-being. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(6), 2898.https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18062898

Ferragut, M., & Fierro, A. (2012). Inteligencia emocional, bienestar personal y rendimiento académico en preadolescentes. Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología, 44(3), 95-104.

Fielding, A. (1993). Scoring functions for ordered classifications in statistical analysis. Quality and Quantity, 27(1), 1-17.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01097007

Fisher, A. N., & Ryan, M. K. (2021). Gender inequalities during COVID-19. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 24(2), 237-245.https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430220984248

Franceschini, F., Galetto, M., & Varetto, M. (2004). Qualitative ordinal scales: the concept of ordinal range. Quality Engineering, 16(4), 514-524.https://doi.org/10.1081/QEN-120038013

Franceschini, F., & García-Lapresta, J. L. (2019). Decision-making in semi-democratic contexts. Information Fusion, 52, 281-289.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.2019.04.003

Gadrich, T. B. (2015). Assessing variation: a unifying approach for all scales of measurement. Quality & Quantity, 49(3), 1145-1167.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-014-0040-9

García-Lapresta, J. L., & González del Pozo, R. (2023). Using scoring functions in a group decision-making procedure with heterogeneous experts and qualitative assessments. International Journal of Approximate Reasoning, 161, 109004.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijar.2023.109004

García-Lapresta, J. L., González del Pozo, R., & Pérez-Román, D. (2018). Metrizable ordinal proximity measures and their aggregation. Information Sciences, 448, 149-163.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ins.2018.03.034

García-Lapresta, J. L., & Pérez-Román, D. (2015). Ordinal proximity measures in the context of unbalanced qualitative scales and some applications to consensus and clustering. Applied Soft Computing, 35, 864-872.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asoc.2015.02.035

García-Lapresta J. L. & Pérez-Román, D. (2018). Aggregating opinions in non-uniform ordered qualitative scales, Applied Soft Computing, 67, 652-657.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asoc.2017.05.064

Genia, V. (2001). Evaluation of the spiritual well-being scale in a sample of college students. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 11(1), 25-33.https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327582IJPR1101_03

Godinić, D., & Obrenovic, B. (2020). Effects of economic uncertainty on mental health in the COVID-19 pandemic context: social identity disturbance, job uncertainty and psychological well-being model. International Journal of Innovation and Economic Development 6(1), 61-74.https://doi.org/10.18775/ijied.1849-7551-7020.2015.61.2005

González del Pozo, R., & García-Lapresta, J. L. (2019). Tratamiento ordinal de las escalas cualitativas utilizadas por el Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas. Revista de Métodos Cuantitativos para la Economía y la Empresa, 28, 124-142.https://doi.org/10.46661/revmetodoscuanteconempresa.3788

González del Pozo, R., & García-Lapresta, J. L. (2021). Managing the smiley face scale used by Booking.com in an ordinal way. Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research 16 (2), 128-139.https://doi.org/10.4067/S0718-18762021000200110

Gurin, G., Veroff, J., & Feld, S. (1960). Americans view their mental health. New York: Basic Books.

Herrera, F., Herrera-Viedma, E., & Martínez, L. (2008). A fuzzy linguistic methodology to deal with unbalanced linguistic term sets. IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, 16(2), 354-370.https://doi.org/10.1109/TFUZZ.2007.896353

Herrera, F., & Martínez, L. (2000). A 2-tuple fuzzy linguistic representation model for computing with words. IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, 8(6), 746-752.https://doi.org/10.1109/91.890332

Hills, P., & Argyle, M. (2002). The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire: a compact scale for the measurement of psychological well-being. Personality and Individual Differences, 33(7), 1073-1082.https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-8869(01)00213-6

Hwang, C. L., & Yoon, K. (1981). Basic concepts and foundations. In Multiple Attribute Decision Making (pp. 16-57). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-48318-9_2

Khaneja, S., Hussain, S., Melewar, T. C., & Foroudi, P. (2022). The effects of physical environment design on the dimensions of emotional well-being: a qualitative study from the perspective of design and retail managers. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 25(2), 161-180.https://doi.org/10.1108/QMR-08-2021-0100

Knapp, T. R. (1990). Treating ordinal scales as interval scales: an attempt to resolve the controversy. Nursing Research, 39(2), 121-123.

https://doi.org/10.1097/00006199-199003000-00019

Lades, L. K., Laffan, K., Daly, M., & Delaney, L. (2020). Daily emotional well‐being during the COVID‐19 pandemic. British Journal of Health Psychology, 25(4), 902-911.https://doi.org/10.1111/bjhp.12450

Lepinteur, A., Clark, A. E., Ferrer-i-Carbonell, A., Piper, A., Schröder, C., & d'Ambrosio, C. (2022). Gender, loneliness and happiness during COVID-19. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 101, 101952.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2022.101952

Li, Q., Miao, Y., Zeng, X., Tarimo, C. S., Wu, C., & Wu, J. (2020). Prevalence and factors for anxiety during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic among the teachers in China. Journal of Affective Disorders, 277, 153-158.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2020.08.017

Likert, R. (1932). A technique for the measurement of attitudes. Archives of Psychology, 22, 1-55.

Machut, K. Z., Kushnir, A., Oji-Mmuo, C. N., Kataria-Hale, J., Lingappan, K., Kwon, S., & Dammann, C. E. (2022). Effect of Coronavirus Disease-2019 on the Workload of Neonatologists. The Journal of Pediatrics, 242, 145-151.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2021.11.002

Maggino, F. (2016). Challenges, needs and risks in defining well-being indicators. In: A Life Devoted to Quality of Life (pp. 209-233). Springer.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20568-7_13

McCullagh, P. (1980). Regression models for ordinal data (with Discussion). Journal of the Royal Statistical Society B, 42(2), 109-127.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2517-6161.1980.tb01109.x

Mittal, S., & Singh, T. (2020). Gender-based violence during COVID-19 pandemic: a mini-review. Frontiers in Global Women's Health, 1(4).

https://doi.org/10.3389/fgwh.2020.00004

Molina Martínez, P., & González del Pozo, R. (2024). Real estate crowdfunding in Spain. Revista Universitaria Europea, 40, 73-102.

Mondragón Pérez, A. R. (2002). ¿Qué son los indicadores? Revista de Información y Análisis, 19, 52-58.

Nieboer, A., Lindenberg, S., Boomsma, A., & Bruggen, A. C. V. (2005). Dimensions of well-being and their measurement: the SPF-IL scale. Social Indicators Research, 73(3), 313-353.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-004-0988-2

Piccolo, D. (2003). On the moments of a mixture of uniform and shifted binomial random variables. Quaderni di Statistica, 5, 85-104.

Pontin, E., Schwannauer, M., Tai, S., & Kinderman, P. (2013). A UK validation of a general measure of subjective well-being: the modified BBC subjective well-being scale (BBC-SWB). Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, 11(1), 1-9.https://doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-11-150

Potts, A. J., Didymus, F. F., & Kaiseler, M. (2023). Psychological stress and psychological well-being among sports coaches: a meta-synthesis of the qualitative research evidence. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 16(1), 554-583.https://doi.org/10.1080/1750984X.2021.1907853

Roberts, F.S. (1979). Measurement theory. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading.

Russo, D., Hanel, P. H., Altnickel, S., & Van Berkel, N. (2021). Predictors of well-being and productivity among software professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic: a longitudinal study. Empirical Software Engineering, 26(4), 62.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-021-09945-9

Saladino, V., Algeri, D., & Auriemma, V. (2020). The psychological and social impact of Covid-19: new perspectives of well-being. Frontiers in Psychology, 2550.https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.577684

Samlani, Z., Lemfadli, Y., Oubaha, S., & Krati, K. (2020). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on quality of life and well-being in Morocco. Archives of Community Medicine and Public Health, 6(2), 130-134.https://doi.org/10.17352/2455-5479.000091

Serra, E. G., & Mora, M. R. (2019). El bienestar emocional como predictor de calidad de vida en los senior co-housing. Cuadernos de Trabajo Social, 2(32), 365-380.https://doi.org/10.5209/cuts.59461

Shaloch, R., & Verdugo, M. (2003). Manual para profesionales de la educación, salud y servicios sociales. Madrid: Alianza editorial.

Sociological Research Center of Spain (2020). Effects and consequences of Coronavirus (I). https://www.cis.es/catalogo-estudios/fid/acceso-a-datos

Stevens, S.S. (1946). On the theory of scales of measurement. Science, 103, 677-680.https://doi.org/10.1126/science.103.2684.677

Stevens, S.S (1951). Mathematics, measurement, and psychophysics. John Wiley & Sons.

Stewart-Brown, S., Tennant, A., Tennant, R., Platt, S., Parkinson, J., & Weich, S. (2009). Internal construct validity of the Warwick-Edinburgh mental well-being scale (WEMWBS): A Rasch analysis using data from the Scottish health education population survey. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, 7(1), 1-8.https://doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-7-15

Tutz, G. (2012). Regression for categorical data. Cambridge: University Press.https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511842061

Vella-Brodrick, D. A., & Allen, F. (1995). Development and psychometric validation of the Mental, Physical, and Spiritual Well-Being Scale. Psychological Reports, 77(2), 659-674.https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1995.77.2.659

Villatoro, P. (2012). La medición del bienestar a través de indicadores subjetivos: una revisión. Santiago de Chile: Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).

Virtanen, P., Liukkonen, V., Vahtera, J., Kivimäki, M., & Koskenvuo, M. (2003). Health inequalities in the workforce: the labour market core-periphery structure. International Journal of Epidemiology, 32(6), 1015-1021.https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyg319

Wang, C., Pan, R., Wan, X., Tan, Y., Xu, L., Ho, C. S., & Ho, R. C. (2020). Immediate psychological responses and associated factors during the initial stage of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) epidemic among the general population in China. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(5), 1729.https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17051729

Published

2025-03-13

How to Cite

González del Pozo, R. (2025). Qualitative information: a proposal for measurement to quantify eh effects of COVID-19 on the emotional well-being of women and men by means of proximities. Journal of Quantitative Methods for Economics and Business Administration, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.46661/rev.metodoscuant.econ.empresa.9545

Issue

Section

Articles