Model of Information Society Measurement – Framework and Selected Outcomes

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)IntroductionThe term information society emerged in Japanese social sciences in the 1960s. Despite the passing of more than 50 years, there are, to date, many definitions and research approaches of in this field. This results in difficulties for the attempts to measure phenomena within this category which can be and are understood differently. However, in the literature there are many methods for the quantitative description of information society. They characterise the level of IS development either by using the sets of indicators, whose number and type are a derivative of the author's preferences or they construct methods based on arbitrarily selected indicators of so-called composite indices (CI), which are aggregate measures. The research goals of this paper are the development of a new method of measuring the information society and determining on its basis, the IS development level in the Silesian Voivodeship.The approach to measuring information society developed by the author is based on the following research tasks:1. proposing an IS definition;2. identifying the main critical success factors (CSFs) determining effective and efficient ICT adoption, separately for people, business and public administration;3. a description of each identified CSFs by a relevant indicator;4. working out a sub-index of ICT adoption by people (pICT), sub-index of ICT adoption by business (bICT) and the sub-index adoption of ICT by public administration (gICT) in the Silesian Voivodeship;5. working out the regional information society index (RISI) for the Silesian Voivodeship based on pICT, bICT and gICT sub-indices.For the implementation of specific research tasks the following research methodologies were used:Task 1. A review of the literature (including author's doctorial dissertation), methods of logical deduction and creative thinking.Task 2. A review of the literature, brainstorming sessions of the research team, practical experience of the author, Delphi method, statistical analysis, online survey applying the CAWI (Computer-Assisted Web Interview) method and employing the Survey Monkey platform, analyzing the collected data using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) and Microsoft Excel software.Task 3. Literature studies, logical reasoning, correlation analysis between the identified CSFs for people, business and public administration, and the evaluation of the ICT adoption level by people, enterprises and public administration using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) and Microsoft Excel software.Task 4. Hellwig's (1968) method of the taxonomical measure of development using Microsoft Excel software.Task 5. Estimating the RISI value using Microsoft Excel software.The paper consists of three parts. The first part reviews the literature on methods of the information society measurement. It is followed by the interpretation of the original method of measuring information society development. The third part presents the results of empirical research and the value of regional information society index (RISI) for the Silesian Voivodeship. The research was conducted within the project 'Designing a system approach is sustainable development of the information society - on the example of Poland' financed by the National Science Centre in Poland, 2011/01/B/HS4/00974, 2011-2014. The author was a member of the project research team.1. Information society as a subject of measurement - a literature reviewCategories such as information and knowledge as well as relationships between them, have not yet been clearly defined in economics. Part of the economic analysis is based on the assumption of the semantic identity of the categories of information and knowledge. The other part makes, clear distinction between them. In my opinion there is a need to distinguish between a conceptual knowledge and information in economics as well as between information society, knowledge-based economy and knowledge society (Zelazny, 2015a). …