I am a nurse scientist and a novice researcher in the area of optimization. Might I ask a favor of your easy and comprehensive explanations on the difference between optimization and data envelopment analysis? Thank you so much for your help in advance.
Saeed Assani OH MY GOD!!! Thanks a million for your help. I think that I finally found the right approach to my research question.
My program of research is to pinpointing Optimal Safe Staffing Levels Maximizing Quality relative to Cost in the Continuum of Changes, which serves as Evidence-based Informed Shared Decision-Making Rationales among partiesㅡpatients, nurses, and stakeholders.
This is my first research outcome, Park's Sweet Spot Theory, which has been developed of a synthesis of nursing science, micro/mathematical economics, operations research, and decision psychology:
Article Park's Optimized Nurse Staffing (Sweet Spot) Estimation Theo...
Article Optimizing Staffing, Quality, and Cost in Home Healthcare Nu...
It took as many as 5 years for me to develop the idea and publish it in one of top nursing journals. So far, I have met many scholars in medicine, public health, economics, nursing, industrial engineering, and have discussed with them about how to solve my research question. However, most of them even did not know "what optimization is" at all. Also, scholars in industrial engineering suggested me non-linear programming or multi-criteria decision making, which was too difficult to me, leaving me to feel devastated.
I think that DEA is the right method to address my research question. How thrilled!
One more question, I have heard from scholars in industrial engineering that my theory is attractive in terms of a scholarly merit and flexible application several times. I thought that my theory could be tested using various optimization methods. What do you think of it?
Aykan Akincilar What do you think of it? Could we apply robust optimization to my theory-based empirical study?
Saeed Assani Perhaps, do you know "grey decision analysis"? I guess that the analysis is covered by business management science. Would it be applicable to my theory-based empirical study do you think?
Thank you for your advice! I have a dataset collected from all healthcare institutions in the whole states of USA, which can be structured in a various way. I thus know that I can do my theory-driven studies in a various way. Among them, DEA could produce the most interesting results to the nurse science community, I think. I am interested in comparisons among various sets of inputs in terms of efficiency, rather than comparisons per healthcare institution by the output. :-) Thanks a million again for your comment!
I think following paper can be useful for you:
Toloo, M., & Mensah, E. K. (2018). Robust optimization with nonnegative decision variables: a DEA approach. Computers & Industrial Engineering.
Saeed Assani How different is the following article from your article (2018)?
Eslami, R., Khodabakhshi, M., Jahanshahloo, G.R., Lotfi, F.H., & Khoveyni, M. (2012). Estimating most productive scale size with imprecise-chance constrained input–output orientation model in data envelopment analysis. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 63(1), 254-261. doi:10.1016/j.cie.2012.02.009 (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360835212000617)
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