Latent variable models to access relationship between communication and information technology

Florianópolis

Congreso; XXVth INTERNATIONAL BIOMETRIC CONFERENCE (IBC-FLORIPA-2010); 2010

XXVth INTERNATIONAL BIOMETRIC CONFERENCE

The spreading of the Communication and Information Technologies (CIT) produces a new form of social exclusion called digital breach, that is, a radical distance between people who have and do not have access to the internet and information technologies. This work is based on the model defined by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL in Spanish) which shows that the CITs influence the human development in the direct and indirect way due to they impact on the economic grown. Thus, human development and technologic advances are strengthened each other. This fact remarks the importance to do of the progress of CITs at regional level from different aspects: people, companies and government agencies. The analysis unit is district defined as a part of the political subdivision, called departments. It was generated indicators of three hypothetical constructs or latent variables: socio-economic and CIT diffusion in homes and diffusion of CIT in local government. The availability and the quality socially differentiated from the infrastructure and basic services have a direct impact on the people´s life quality. The lack of infrastructure constitutes a restriction for the development of the local economy and increases the distance and the isolation of the social groups. The rate considered to include people´s life quality was the percentage of homes with Unsatisfied Basic Needs (UBN). Beside, the availability of the computer equipment at home was calculated with Percentage of homes with PC and Percentage of homes with PC and access to Internet (from population Census of Córdoba, 2001). At district level, this work used Percentage of towns with web site and Percentage of towns with e-mail address. The aim of this work was to explore the relationship among the socioeconomic level of the different districts, the availability of the computer equipment at home and the advance of the electronic Government in Córdoba Province, Argentina. Following Generalized Linear Latent and Mixed Models (GLLAMMs, Skrondal & Rabe-Hesketh, 2004), a confirmatory factor analysis was proposed as a hypotheticist procedure to test the hypothesis about the relationship between our indicators and factor constructs. The results show high correlation between latent variables defined at home level and low correlation with other construct. In advance this allows us to consider only one latent variable to level of home.