Dear ADElisters,
I'm a sociologist and, among other things, I'm currently studying patterns
of diffusion of New Religious Movements in contemporary Italy. Reading the
copious and interesting documentation related to ADE-4, I've noticed that a
particular kind of table is often discussed: abundance data tables. I've
got the impression that the analytical techniques that are usually applied
to these tables could be fruitfully used also for the analysis of another
table I'm interested in, though I don't know how.
My problem is as follows:
1) I have a table with I rows and J columns, where I=95=number of italian
provinces, and J=about 250=number of New Religious Movements currently
present in Italy. Each cell of this table contains the number of "units" of
a given NRM in a given province. Alternatively, each cell could contain a 1
(NMR present) or a 0 (NMR absent).
2) I might have an additional table with I rows and K columns, where I is
defined as above and K denotes a series of characteristics of the provinces.
Questions:
1) Does it make sense to apply all the ecological techiniques to these
tables (technically speaking, of course)? For instance, does it make sense
to calculate indices of diversity, abundance or the like?
2) Since each province has a different population, I guess I should
standardized the cell frequencies in such a way to get rates (e.g., number
of units of a given NRM per 100.000 population). Again, what are the best
analytical techniques to apply?
3) In any case, should I take into account space, i.e. spatial
autocorrelation and the like?
4) What could I read to better understand the potentialities and the
rationale of these techiniques?
Thank you very much for your attention and best wishes,
Maurizio Pisati
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Via Castelfidardo, 9 Office: +39-461-881478 (University of Trento)
21052 Busto Arsizio VA E-mail: maurizio.pisati@galactica.it
ITALY
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