Analysis of Social Participation: A Multidimensional Approach Based on the Theory of Partial Ordering

Abstract

We propose a multidimensional approach to describe the structure of social participation based on the theory of partial ordering. Social participation has been defined as the process of taking decisions concerning the life of an individual and that of the community in which he lives (Hart 1992).

The participation is characterized by:

• An ongoing process of self-responsibility and choice;

• Being an interactive part of something, somewhere, some group.

Participating is a place of non-neutrality; it is the awareness that our being in the world is called to take an ethical line according to principles of justice and equity. Studying this concept is really important because social participation, involving vulnerable and excluded groups, should seek the empowerment of those groups, increasing their effective control over decisions that influence their health and life quality and their access to and use of health services.

Classical methods of analysis are framed to a particular aspect of this phenomenon. In this chapter, we will explore dynamic and multidimensional measures of social participation in Italy, leveraging properties of the poset theory. To represent these measures in a synthetic way, we will adopt a fuzzy approach: our purpose is not to measure social participation but to provide its structural representation in terms of profiles while complying with the shape of ordinal data. We begin by offering a working definition of social participation, then the analysis moves from the Multipurpose Survey on households: aspects of daily life, a longitudinal database that can measure change.