Dr. Yael Albo holds Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in the Information and Knowledge Management Department from the University of Haifa, and M.Sc. and B.A. degrees in Medical Computing and Computer Science from the Technion.
Dr. Albo is an expert on Time-oriented Composite Indicator Visualization and has published number of articles in this theme.
Since 2017, Dr. Albo has been a lecturer in the field of Information Visualization (Undergraduate and Graduate studies) on several academic universities and colleges (including the Technion, Tel-Aviv University and Bar-Ilan University).
In the past, she developed and taught Computer programming for children in the Technology & Science Youth Unit at the Technion, she was a member in the Israel national ICT Project team within the Center for Internet Research at the University of Haifa (headed by Prof. Sheizaf Refaeli) and a member of a research team within the Samuel Neaman Institute focusing on digital divide and online user behaviour evaluation using survey and digital trace data.
Dr. Albo’s research interests include composite indicators construction and visualization, digital divide and online user behaviour evaluation.
Winners and losers of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Israel and France: Evaluating the long-term effects of the crisis on well-being
The COVID-19 pandemic is a global watershed event that has substantially scarred the social and economic fabric of societies and individuals alike. The road to recovery from this pandemic is likely to be a gradual and slow process that will have an unequal impact on different parts of society. This proposed study sets out to identify, investigate, model and predict the factors associated with the objective and subjective well-being of the Israeli and French populations in the midst of the pandemic and in a world recovering from COVID-19. The assessment considers both material (i.e., socio-economic status, income and wealth) and socio-psychological conditions (i.e., feelings of subjective well-being, depression levels, family tensions), as well as underlying societal factors (resilience, social cohesion, social capital, degree of trust etc.). Special focus will be placed on the catalysts and agents, which differentially impacted vulnerable groups in society in the midst of the pandemic and on the factors that are projected to lead towards differential recovery. The comparison between Israel and France is especially interesting in terms of the potential “winners” and “losers” from the pandemic. An open question relates to both the contingent and structural elements of both societies and their ability to cope with the pandemic: France with its long-term stabilizers and social security system but slower epidemiological reaction or Israel with a less extended welfare system but with higher reactivity at the epidemiological level (a fast and effective vaccination campaign). The proposed project will employ a wide array of qualitative and quantitative tools for the collection and analysis of the research data. The French data will be based on the ELIPSS longitudinal survey, a probability-based panel. Similar data will be collected for Israel via a specially tailored web survey. In addition to survey data, unobtrusive digital trace data will be collected from human sources and online tools (e.g., webpage visits analysis, social network discourse analysis etc.). An innovative effort will be made to triangulate these unobtrusive data sources with the panel data and qualitative interviews. In order to test the relationship between socio-economic, behavioral and societal factors influencing the well-being and the coping abilities of the Israeli and French populations, mediation and moderation analysis will be implemented. The proposed bi-national project will equip stakeholders in both countries with well-established information that could help them in formulating guidelines for assisting vulnerable populations at times of crisis and speed up their recovery.
An Innovative Approach for Measuring the Digital Divide in Israel: Digital Trace Data as Means for Formulating Policy Guidelines
In recent years, the study of digital divide is becoming increasingly important for policy formulation, as well as the evaluation of policy and interventions. A wide array of qualitative and quantitative methods has been used over the years to measure the scope of the digital divide between countries and various populations groups and to identify the main factors affecting it. These methods include surveys, structured interviews, open questionnaires and indicator analyses. While very useful and important, these “self-report” methods are obtrusive and very costly, thus unreplicable.
