Alessandra GaiaUniversità degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca | UNIMIB · Department of Sociology and Social Research
Alessandra Gaia
PhD in Sociology and Methodology of Social Research
About
25
Publications
1,720
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117
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
I am a research fellow at the Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Milan-Bicocca. Current research interests comprise survey methodology, methodology of social research, and ageing.
Email: alessandra.gaiaATunimib.it
Twitter: @gaialessandra
Web: https://sites.google.com/site/alessandragaiacv/home
Publications
Publications (25)
The demographic landscape of European countries is rapidly changing because of population ageing; in this context, societies are called to offer older people opportunities to age actively. Although ‘active ageing’ has been broadly explored, there is still room to further our knowledge on the individual conditions that may favour or hinder activity...
Despite older people's increasing use of social media (SM), there is relatively little research investigating the impact of SM use on wellbeing in the ageing population. This study investigates the relationship between SM use and life satisfaction, a key dimension of wellbeing, in three age groups. We focus on the Italian case, which is particularl...
This chapter reviews different process‐generated data sources and new technologies that could be used to enhance the measurement of household finances in longitudinal surveys. It examines financial aggregators, loyalty cards, credit and debit cards, credit ratings, barcode scanning, receipt scanning, and mobile apps. The chapter aims to contribute...
The item count technique (ICT), also known as unmatched count technique or list experiments, is an indirect questioning technique adopted to increase data quality in survey questions on sensitive topics (e.g., drug use, sexual behaviour, health, attitudes towards minorities). When presented with questions on sensitive topics, respondents may delibe...
Social desirability bias is a source of survey error associated with respondents’ tendency to answer survey questions in a way that they consider as more socially acceptable than would be their ‘true’ answer. With this behaviour, respondents aim to project a favourable image of themselves. Respondents may misreport their answer by overreporting soc...
The European ageing population poses unprecedented challenges to society as a whole. Social Networking Sites might be important tools to boost older people's well-being, strengthening and creating social connections in old age. Despite of its potentialities, there is relatively little knowledge on the impact of SNS use on older people's well-being,...
Social networking sites (SNSs) might be important tools to contrast social exclusion in old age. However, the so-called gray digital divide (GDD) may undermine the potentialities of SNSs. Despite its relevance, there is very little research, which documented the characteristics of the digital divide in SNS use among the old-age population in Europe...
Household surveys remain a key data source for measuring living standards and inequality. Survey data on incomes are known to suffer from reporting and non-response errors. In this paper, we implement and test a method that attempts to reduce errors directly in the data collection process, rather than mitigating them econometrically at the analysis...
When surveying immigrant populations or ethnic minority groups, it is important for survey researchers to consider that respondents might vary in their level of language proficiency. While survey translations might be offered, they are usually available for a limited number of languages, and even then, non-native speakers may not utilize questionna...
Social exclusion is one of the challenges posed by an ageing society. The Information and Communication Technologies (Icts) may play an important role in contrasting older people’s social exclusion, offering additional means to contrast loneliness and social isolation in old age. Using data from the Eurostat Community Statistics on Information Soci...
Older people’s social exclusion is one of the challenges faced by many contemporary societies. Social Networking Sites (SNSs), like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, might contrast social exclusion, boosting older people’s social interactions. However, the digital divide
may undermine the potentialities of SNSs. This paper investigates inequalities in...
Acknowledgements: This research is funded by Fondazione Cariplo [Bando 2017, ricerca scientifica: Ricerca sociale sull'invecchiamento: persone, luoghi e relazioni.
We review process generated data sources and new technologies that could be used to improve the measurement of household finances. For each of thesewe review what is known about (i) the content of what can be measured, (ii) examples of research for which these data have been used, (iii) whether the data have been used asfree-standing data sources o...
Asking respondents sensitive questions directly may lead to socially desirable responding. As alternative, some have proposed using the Item Count Technique (ICT). The problem with ICT methods is that these can have low statistical efficiency, but also do not provide an indicator of the behavior at the respondent level. We propose a new variant of...
Linking survey responses with administrative data is a promising practice to increase the range of research questions to be explored, at a limited interview burden, both for respondents and interviewers. We describe the protocol for asking consent to data linkage on nine different sources in a large-scale nationally representative longitudinal surv...
Across the world longitudinal studies are facing falling response rates, at the same time cost imperatives are bringing into question the feasibility of large scale regular face-to-face data collection. While, the rapid development of communications technology and associated cultural changes is assumed to mean that study participants will increasin...
This paper evaluates the effect of switching an existing panel study from a unimode face-to-face design to a sequential mixed-mode design (web followed by face-to-face interviewing) on attrition. I use large-scale randomise experimental data from the Innovation Panel of Understanding Society While the introduction of a mixed-mode design increases p...
Projects
Projects (4)
DIGITAL-AGE analyses the interrelation between digital, health, social capital and labour market inequalities, among the old age population in Italy.
The scope of the ACTIVE IT project is to empirically investigate opportunities for active ageing promotion in pandemic and post-pandemic societies and to explore the set of resources older men and women enact to adapt to the digitalisation of society (a structural societal changes which has been accelerated by the Covid-19 outbreak).
Specifically, the ACTIVE IT project will address the following research questions:
What are the consequences of Covid-19 for active ageing and wellbeing in older age?
What type of social and digital resources (social networks, digital skills, etc.) older men and women enacted to adapt to the challenges posed by the Covid-19 outbreak?
How do older men and women’s adaptation strategies evolve to respond to the evolution of the pandemic situation?
What are the potentialities of peer-to-peer digital education to respond to older men and women’s needs?
This project is the continuation of the project Aging in a networked society. Older people, social networks, and wellbeing. More information available here: https://aginginanetworkedsociety.wordpress.com/ and https://www.researchgate.net/project/Aging-in-a-networked-society-Older-people-social-networks-and-well-being
Principal Investigator Professor Emanuela Sala (University of Milano-Bicocca)
V-DATA project seeks to contribute to building a more balanced relation between citizens and surveillance capitalism processes, as well as the actors that govern them.
Specifically, on the one hand it seeks to filling the knowledge gap about Italian public opinion on dynamics and logics of surveillance capitalism, as well as on the risks of inequality and discrimination related to surveillance capitalism in Italy.
On the other hand, it seeks to raise the public awareness on these issues, thus potentially enhancing citizens’ ability to questioning these processes.
