Indicators in the Framework of Partial
Order
Filomena Maggino, Rainer Bruggemann, and Leonardo Salvatore Alaimo
1 Introduction: Indicators and Management of Complexity
The topic of indicators has been and continues to be considered a “niche field” in
the methodological scientific debate. However, during the last decades, this issue
has been discussed in any conference, workshop and seminar on measuring socioeconomic dimensions. This is not a specific issue of the natural and social sciences.
Indicators are used and constructed everywhere and their functions in contemporary
societies are widespread. We can observe their increasing importance also in the
media and in the public debate. Governments and international organizations use
them to compare and rank countries on some particular topics, like quality of life,
wellbeing or sustainability.
Although the term indicator is often used as a synonym for index, in statistics
it represents a more recent term indicating indirect measures of phenomena not
directly measurable. In this perspective, an indicator is not simple crude statistical
information but represents a measure organically connected to a conceptual model
aimed at describing different aspects of reality (Maggino 2017a). In brief, an
indicator is what relates concepts to reality through observation. Indicators should
F. Maggino ()
Dipartimento di Scienze Statistiche, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
e-mail: filomena.maggino@uniroma1.it
R. Bruggemann
Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries,
Berlin, Germany
L. S. Alaimo
Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
Italian National Institute of Statistics – Istat, Rome, Italy
e-mail: leonardo.alaimo@istat.it
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
R. Bruggemann et al. (eds.), Measuring and Understanding Complex Phenomena,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59683-5_2
17
Order
Filomena Maggino, Rainer Bruggemann, and Leonardo Salvatore Alaimo
1 Introduction: Indicators and Management of Complexity
The topic of indicators has been and continues to be considered a “niche field” in
the methodological scientific debate. However, during the last decades, this issue
has been discussed in any conference, workshop and seminar on measuring socioeconomic dimensions. This is not a specific issue of the natural and social sciences.
Indicators are used and constructed everywhere and their functions in contemporary
societies are widespread. We can observe their increasing importance also in the
media and in the public debate. Governments and international organizations use
them to compare and rank countries on some particular topics, like quality of life,
wellbeing or sustainability.
Although the term indicator is often used as a synonym for index, in statistics
it represents a more recent term indicating indirect measures of phenomena not
directly measurable. In this perspective, an indicator is not simple crude statistical
information but represents a measure organically connected to a conceptual model
aimed at describing different aspects of reality (Maggino 2017a). In brief, an
indicator is what relates concepts to reality through observation. Indicators should
F. Maggino ()
Dipartimento di Scienze Statistiche, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
e-mail: filomena.maggino@uniroma1.it
R. Bruggemann
Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries,
Berlin, Germany
L. S. Alaimo
Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
Italian National Institute of Statistics – Istat, Rome, Italy
e-mail: leonardo.alaimo@istat.it
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
R. Bruggemann et al. (eds.), Measuring and Understanding Complex Phenomena,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59683-5_2
17