OasisR: An R Package to Bring Some Order to the World of Segregation Measurement

Abstract

Interest in social segregation measurement has increased strongly over the years and the number of segregation indices proposed in the literature have become more complex. However there are only a few software applications that can be employed to analyze social segregation, and these are usually available as a plug-in/package in geographic information system (GIS) software or as limited stand-alone application. Thus, the development of a package which exploits the power and versatility of the R environment for statistical computing and graphics would be desirable. Also, analysis of the segregation indices shows that there are ambiguities and errors in the literature, and consequently in the available software applications. This is an even more important reason why we need to develop a new tool to bring some order to the world of segregation measurement. This paper contributes also by proposing an automatic statistical testing methodology for these indices, using several resampling techniques: randomization tests, bootstrap and jackknife.