Ivano Bison
University of Trento, Sociology and Social Research, Faculty Member
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What happens if we decide to plot sequences as graphs? Can this approach increase our knowledge of the underlying structure common to the single sequences? Moreover, will this approach bring to the surface the structures, patterns, and... more
What happens if we decide to plot sequences as graphs? Can this approach increase our knowledge of the underlying structure common to the single sequences? Moreover, will this approach bring to the surface the structures, patterns, and careers still (perhaps) hidden to our eyes and knowledge?
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Italy has always been characterized by low rates of career mobility. However, whilst the essential features of intragenerational (im)mobility in Italy are relatively well known, much less is known about the pattern of the specific paths... more
Italy has always been characterized by low rates of career mobility. However, whilst the essential features of intragenerational (im)mobility in Italy are relatively well known, much less is known about the pattern of the specific paths linking the class of the first job with later class positions. To date, no studies of career mobility have been conducted in holistic terms; that is, based on examination of the entire sequence of the class positions occupied by an individual during his/her work history. This paper develops a typology of sequences of transition from one social class to another which preserves the qualitative differences among individual sequences. We introduce a new method to measure resemblance among sequences in order to identify the main career paths observable in Italy. We then examine how these profiles have changed over time because of transformations in the economic system and of the changing size of different social classes. Furthermore, we will try to determine whether and how social origins and education affect the probabilities of following those paths. The results show that social origins: 1) still influence the career patterns of younger cohorts); and 2) play a very important role in modifying the chances of highly-educated people to enter the upward career patterns leading to the service class or to white-collar positions.
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The analysis of horizontal inequalities in the educational yields has recently raised an increasing interest, as they explain a larger portion of the inequalities in the labour market, both in terms of wages and in terms of employment... more
The analysis of horizontal inequalities in the educational yields has recently raised an increasing interest, as they explain a larger portion of the inequalities in the labour market, both in terms of wages and in terms of employment risk. This paper analyses the horizontal inequalities in terms of one-year employment risk for bachelor and master\u2019s graduates between 2008 and 2013 at the University of Trento (Italy). It is studied the employment situation of students one year after graduation, distinguishing between those who are unemployed, those whose job is consistent with their academic career, and those who work in a different sector. It is also considered the portion of graduates who are involved in an internship, as this seems to have became an important way of access to the Italian job market. In order to describe both the multiplicity of the employment situations and the hierarchical clustering of graduates with respect to their degree courses, data are modelled by means of multilevel multilogit models. The analysis is based both on administrative data of the University of Trento and on results of the periodic surveys on Italian graduates conducted by the Italian intercollegiate consortium Almalaurea; this allows us to assess the effect of the regularity of the educational path, the time of graduation, the final mark and other characteristic of students\u2019 academic careers on their employment situation one year after graduation
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Research Interests: Geography and Humanities
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Data from the 1997 Italian Households LongitudinalSurvey (ILFI) are used to study the determinants of self-employment in Italyfrom 1980 to 1997.First, a discussion of the composite nature ofself-employment in Italy is offered.This... more
Data from the 1997 Italian Households LongitudinalSurvey (ILFI) are used to study the determinants of self-employment in Italyfrom 1980 to 1997.First, a discussion of the composite nature ofself-employment in Italy is offered.This discussion stressesself-employment's roots in the artisan- and small-firm-based nationalproduction structure, the crisis of the Fordist mode of production, and thesubsequent expansion of the service economy.The data, which are based onthe employment histories of 9,874 survey respondents between the ages of 18 and60, are then described and analyzed. Findings suggest that self-employment in Italy is male-dominated and thatage affects female entries into self-employment more than it does maleentries.The data also indicate that secondary and tertiary education iscapital for self-employed professionals and freelancers. In the case ofunskilled self-employment, compulsory education is the most important.Perhaps not surprisingly, children of self-employed parents are more likely toenter into self-employment.Those who leave self-employment are mainlywomen, young people, workers with a general secondary education, and those withunstable work histories. (SAA)
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I figli di immigrati sono ormai una presenza stabile nella scuola italiana. La loro presenza si attesta attorno al 9.0% sul territorio nazionale, con una maggiore presenza nel nord Italia. Tra il 2007 e il 2012, una ricerca longitudinale... more
I figli di immigrati sono ormai una presenza stabile nella scuola italiana. La loro presenza si attesta attorno al 9.0% sul territorio nazionale, con una maggiore presenza nel nord Italia. Tra il 2007 e il 2012, una ricerca longitudinale ha seguito una coorte di studenti delle superiori nella loro esperienza scolastica. Nell’ultima rilevazione, oltre al questionario sono stati somministrati quattro sociogrammi volti a ricostruire le relazioni interpersonali all’interno delle classi. Partendo dalle ampiamente documentate difficolta scolastiche dei giovani stranieri, molta parte della letteratura sostiene che tali difficolta non siano dovute solo a differenze nelle competenze individuali e nelle risorse a disposizione delle famiglie, ma anche al tipo di relazioni interpersonali che si stabiliscono tra i banchi scolastici. Il saggio esplora quindi i nessi tra sociabilita, carriera migratoria ed esito scolastico evidenziando come questi aspetti siano inscindibili nell’esperienza quotidiana nella scuola italiana. Le analisi condotte confermano l’importanza della dimensione relazionale: l’effetto dei pari, misurato attraverso un indice di status, e quello di contribuire a ridurre sensibilmente il rischio del fallimento scolastico. Tuttavia per gli studenti stranieri questo effetto, sebbene simile a quello per i nativi, non e tale da compensare lo svantaggio iniziale.
Research Interests: Humanities and Art
Abstract The use of systems for e-learning has been widely discussed in terms of its efficiency and efficacy as part of the learning process. Less attention has been given to the fact that these systems produce, as an inherent collateral... more
Abstract The use of systems for e-learning has been widely discussed in terms of its efficiency and efficacy as part of the learning process. Less attention has been given to the fact that these systems produce, as an inherent collateral effect of their adoption, highly useful and interesting information regarding the development of learning processes and the behaviour of the various actors. The latter point is the focus of this study. We present the initial results of an experiment with the use of e-learning at the University of Trento. ...
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This article analyse the preferences and constraints that underlie the choice of fields of study made by 2333 students enrolled at the University of Trento in the academic year 2014/15 through a family of statistical models known in the... more
This article analyse the preferences and constraints that underlie the choice of fields of study made by 2333 students enrolled at the University of Trento in the academic year 2014/15 through a family of statistical models known in the literature as Discrete Choice Models, Random Utility Models (McFadden, 1973).The analysis takes into account the factors that lead a person to enrol in a course of study. In determining the final choice, next to the complex intertwining of ascriptive, acquisitive and motivational factors, there is an equally strong component played by assessments on available alternatives.
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CHAPTER TEN Self-Employment in Italy: Scaling the Class Barriers Paolo Barbieri and Ivano Bison Self-and extra-farm employment has once again become of interest to sociologists and economists in Italy, as well as in other developed... more
CHAPTER TEN Self-Employment in Italy: Scaling the Class Barriers Paolo Barbieri and Ivano Bison Self-and extra-farm employment has once again become of interest to sociologists and economists in Italy, as well as in other developed coun-tries. This is a consequence of ...
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Mood inference with mobile sensing data has been studied in ubicomp literature over the last decade. This inference enables context-aware and personalized user experiences in general mobile apps and valuable feedback and interventions in... more
Mood inference with mobile sensing data has been studied in ubicomp literature over the last decade. This inference enables context-aware and personalized user experiences in general mobile apps and valuable feedback and interventions in mobile health apps. However, even though model generalization issues have been highlighted in many studies, the focus has always been on improving the accuracies of models using different sensing modalities and machine learning techniques, with datasets collected in homogeneous populations. In contrast, less attention has been given to studying the performance of mood inference models to assess whether models generalize to new countries. In this study, we collected a mobile sensing dataset with 329K self-reports from 678 participants in eight countries (China, Denmark, India, Italy, Mexico, Mongolia, Paraguay, UK) to assess the effect of geographical diversity on mood inference models. We define and evaluate country-specific (trained and tested with...
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ABSTRACT
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The analysis of horizontal inequalities in the educational yields has recently raised an increasing interest, as they explain a larger portion of the inequalities in the labour market, both in terms of wages and in terms of employment... more
The analysis of horizontal inequalities in the educational yields has recently raised an increasing interest, as they explain a larger portion of the inequalities in the labour market, both in terms of wages and in terms of employment risk. This paper analyses the horizontal inequalities in terms of one-year employment risk for bachelor and master\u2019s graduates between 2008 and 2013 at the University of Trento (Italy). It is studied the employment situation of students one year after graduation, distinguishing between those who are unemployed, those whose job is consistent with their academic career, and those who work in a different sector. It is also considered the portion of graduates who are involved in an internship, as this seems to have became an important way of access to the Italian job market. In order to describe both the multiplicity of the employment situations and the hierarchical clustering of graduates with respect to their degree courses, data are modelled by means of multilevel multilogit models. The analysis is based both on administrative data of the University of Trento and on results of the periodic surveys on Italian graduates conducted by the Italian intercollegiate consortium Almalaurea; this allows us to assess the effect of the regularity of the educational path, the time of graduation, the final mark and other characteristic of students\u2019 academic careers on their employment situation one year after graduation
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In the context of the project “WeNet: Internet of us” we are studying the role of diversity in relation to Internetmediated social interactions. In this paper, in particular, we analyze a possible relationship between personality aspects... more
In the context of the project “WeNet: Internet of us” we are studying the role of diversity in relation to Internetmediated social interactions. In this paper, in particular, we analyze a possible relationship between personality aspects and social interaction mediated by digital platforms. More specifically, we rely on the five personality traits (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability and Openness to Experience), commonly referred to as “Big-five”, and associate them to automatically extracted behavioral characteristics derived from the experience of using a Chatbot for a closed community of students at the Universidad Católica “Nuestra Señora de la Asunción” (UC). The personality data comes from a self-report made by the users through questionnaires. The main results show very positive appraisals about the use of the Chatbot in terms of user experience and its main functionalities. As for the role of personality in relation to the main use of the Chatbot, although further experience is required to confirm trends, the results suggest that there are some correlations between some of the five personality traits and the length of questions and answers as well as the selection of best answers.
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Among the general population, students are especially sensitive to social media and smartphones because of their pervasiveness. Several studies have shown that there is a negative correlation between social media and academic performance... more
Among the general population, students are especially sensitive to social media and smartphones because of their pervasiveness. Several studies have shown that there is a negative correlation between social media and academic performance since they can lead to behaviors that hurt students' careers, e.g., addictedness. However, these studies either focus on smartphones and social media addictedness or rely on surveys, which only provide approximate estimates. We propose to bridge this gap by i) parametrizing social media usage and academic performance, and ii) combining smartphones and time diaries to keep track of users' activities and their smartphone interaction. We apply our solution on the 72 students participating in the SmartUnitn project, which investigates students' time management and their academic performance. By analyzing the logs of social media apps on students' smartphones and by comparing them to students' credits and grades, we can provide a quan...
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This article sets out a quantitative theory of the interaction among "subjects" which allows a: description of the pragmatic aspects of communication. Within a system of interacting subjects each individual is described by means... more
This article sets out a quantitative theory of the interaction among "subjects" which allows a: description of the pragmatic aspects of communication. Within a system of interacting subjects each individual is described by means of a set of interaction parameters. 'In this \Alay an interaction paHern reiativs to each subject can be' defined. The model provides a "change law" which describes the evolution of individual patterns as a consequence of different communication events. This allows interactiqn deficiencies to be identified and suggests possible strategies for dealing with them. The theory was first developed in the area of clinical psychiatry and underwent two kinds of external verification: one psychometric-diagnostic, the other clinical. The theory was then applied to an economic environment in the behavioral study of decision-making processes. In this paper we suggest that it may be applied to the development of user models in computerized envi...
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Este artigo se utiliza de evidencias empiricas sobre redes de organizacoes voluntarias que se mobilizam em torno de questoes relacionadas a minorias etnicas, ao meio ambiente e a exclusao social em duas cidades britânicas, com vistas a... more
Este artigo se utiliza de evidencias empiricas sobre redes de organizacoes voluntarias que se mobilizam em torno de questoes relacionadas a minorias etnicas, ao meio ambiente e a exclusao social em duas cidades britânicas, com vistas a distinguir entre processos de movimento social e outras dinâmicas cognatas de acao coletiva. Os processos de movimento social sao identificados como a construcao e reproducao de densas redes informais entre uma multiplicidade de atores que compartilham uma identidade coletiva e estao engajados em um conflito social e/ou politico. Tais processos sao contrastados com os processos de coalizao, nos quais as aliancas com vistas a alcancar objetivos especificos nao se apoiam em vinculos de identidade significativos, e com os processos organizacionais, nos quais a acao coletiva, na maioria das vezes, ocorre antes em referencia a organizacoes especificas do que a redes mais amplas e menos definidas. Palavras-chave : movimentos sociais; formas de acao coletiva...
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This article assesses the experience with i-Log at the European Big Data Hackathon 2019, a satellite event of the New Techniques and Technologies for Statistics (NTTS) conference, organised by Eurostat. i-Log is a system that enables... more
This article assesses the experience with i-Log at the European Big Data Hackathon 2019, a satellite event of the New Techniques and Technologies for Statistics (NTTS) conference, organised by Eurostat. i-Log is a system that enables capturing personal big data from smartphones’ internal sensors to be used for time use measurement. It allows the collection of heterogeneous types of data, enabling new possibilities for sociological urban field studies. Sensor data such as those related to the location or the movements of the user can be used to investigate and gain insights into the time diaries’ answers and assess their overall quality. The key idea is that the users’ answers are used to train machine-learning algorithms, allowing the system to learn from the user’s habits and to generate new time diaries’ answers. In turn, these new labels can be used to assess the quality of existing ones, or to fill the gaps when the user does not provide an answer. The aim of this paper is to in...
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Various studies have investigated the predictability of different aspects of human behavior such as mobility patterns, social interactions, and shopping and online behaviors. However, the existing researches have been often limited to a... more
Various studies have investigated the predictability of different aspects of human behavior such as mobility patterns, social interactions, and shopping and online behaviors. However, the existing researches have been often limited to a single or to the combination of few behavioral dimensions, and they have adopted the perspective of an outside observer who is unaware of the motivations behind the specific behaviors or activities of a given individual. The key assumption of this work is that human behavior is deliberated based on an individual’s own perception of the situation that s/he is in, and that therefore it should also be studied under the same perspective. Taking inspiration from works in ubiquitous and context-aware computing, we investigate the role played by four contextual dimensions (or modalities), namely time, location, activity being carried out, and social ties, on the predictability of individuals’ behaviors, using a month of collected mobile phone sensor reading...
This study explores some features of slider bars in the context of a multi-device web survey. Using data collected among the students of the University of Trento in 2015 and 2016 by means of two web surveys ( N = 6,343 and 4,124)... more
This study explores some features of slider bars in the context of a multi-device web survey. Using data collected among the students of the University of Trento in 2015 and 2016 by means of two web surveys ( N = 6,343 and 4,124) including two experiments, we investigated the effect of the initial position of the handle and the presence of numeric labels on answers provided using slider bars. It emerged that the initial position of the handle affected answers and that the number of rounded scores increased with numeric feedback. Smartphone respondents appeared more sensitive to the initial position of the handle but also less affected by the presence of numeric labels resulting in a lower tendency to rounding. Yet, outcomes on anchoring were inconclusive. Overall, no relevant differences have been detected between tablet and PC respondents. Understanding to what extent interactive and engaging tools such as slider bars can be successfully employed in multi-device surveys without aff...
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Resumo Este artigo se utiliza de evidências empíricas sobre redes de organizações voluntárias que se mobilizam em torno de questões relacionadas a minorias étnicas, ao meio ambiente e à exclusão social em duas cidades britânicas, com... more
Resumo Este artigo se utiliza de evidências empíricas sobre redes de organizações voluntárias que se mobilizam em torno de questões relacionadas a minorias étnicas, ao meio ambiente e à exclusão social em duas cidades britânicas, com vistas a distinguir entre processos de movimento social e outras dinâmicas cognatas de ação coletiva. Os processos de movimento social são identificados como a construção e reprodução de densas redes informais entre uma multiplicidade de atores que compartilham uma ...