Ranking is extremely popular today. The imagination of ranking producers is without limits. They just rank everything: from cities, regions and nations via artists and intellectuals to schools and universities (Pehrke, 2007). Ranking first became fashionable in the United States (visits to or similar sites testify to its popularity). But meanwhile ranking has conquered the world. One of the latest hypes are university rankings, for example, pushed by the European Union. Down to earth, one may ask whether ranking is a useful tool or a wrong medicine. Some don'ts or warnings seem in place.
Method
Over the years we have done some research on ranking, focusing on cities and regions in different countries. Cities and regions have, for example, been rated in terms of environmental quality (Germany), quality of life (France) or locational quality for businesses (Germany and the US). See Drewe & Rosenboom (1993). Research in our case meant a secondary analysis of the existing data, using a multivariate statistical technique. This allows to determine the dimensionality of the indicators, whether they measure what the ranking builders pretend to measure. As most ranking topics are complex, multidimensionality is the rule.
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