Spatiality is an increasingly important dimension in the social sciences, as a new wave of recent publications shows. Intra-national comparisons have proved to be as fruitful as the better known inter-national analysis. Regional characteristics are found to have considerable influence on individual behaviour. This movement was fostered by methodological advances, e.g. in multi-level techniques. On the data side spatial analysis is supported by a good basic infrastructure in official and semi-official information, often provided in the way of easily usable DVDs. In addition, both scientific researchers and commercial marketing firms collect valuable information, partly on a very detailed local level of only a handful of households. However, there is ample room for improvement. Huge existing datasets (e.g. PISA E) are not open for spatial oriented scientific purposes; in many cases regional information is not sufficiently available (e.g. on criminal behaviour); systematic over-sampling in sparsely inhabited areas to allow additional regional analysis is not very common.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.