Weights and importance in composite indicators: Closing the gap

Composite indicators are very popular tools for assessing and ranking countries and institutions in terms of environmental performance, sustainability, and other complex concepts that are not directly measurable. Because of the stakes that come with the media attention of these tools, a word of caution is warranted. One common misconception relates to the effect of the weights assigned to indicators during the aggregation process. This work presents a novel series of tools that allow developers and users of composite indicators to explore effects of these weights. First, the importance of each indicator to the composite is measured by the nonlinear Pearson correlation ratio, estimated by Bayesian Gaussian processes. Second, the effect of each indicator is isolated from that of other indicators using regression analysis, and examined in detail. Finally, an optimisation procedure is proposed which allows weights to be fitted to agree with pre-specified values of importance. These three tools together give developers considerable insight into the effects of weights and suggest possibilities for refining and simplifying the aggregation. The added value of these tools are shown on three case studies: the Resource Governance Index, the Good Country Index, and the Water Retention Index.     

Are right- and left-handedness relevant as general categories in a non-industrialized country?

Whether right- and left-handedness are defined as a function of individual tasks or represent general categories across tasks has been long debated. However, the literature on handedness primarily concerns industrialized societies in which manual work has been extensively automated, and the majority of individuals in those countries do not use their arms and hands intensively for highly specialized tasks on an everyday basis. Thus, the question remains whether results from those countries regarding handedness are transferable to countries where the majority of individuals are still exploiting their lateralized skills. Here, we sampled 506 individuals from 143 locations on the islands of Flores and Adonara, Indonesia, to assess their hand preference for and hand performance on several tasks in order to evaluate, in a non-industrialized country, the level of manual specialization and the relevance of right- or left-handedness as general categories. Generalized-declared handedness was consistent with task-declared handedness across 10 specific tasks and with a measure of strength and a measure of skilfulness, suggesting that general handedness is a valid concept. This hand specialization for tasks is discussed in the context of intense and daily tool use in this agricultural society.     

Assessing Progress towards Public Health,Human Rights,and International Development Goals Using Frontier Analysis

Indicators to measure progress towards achieving public health, human rights, and international development targets, such as 100% access to improved drinking water or zero maternal mortality ratio, generally focus on status (i.e., level of attainment or coverage) or trends in status (i.e., rates of change). However, these indicators do not account for different levels of development that countries experience, thus making it difficult to compare progress between countries. We describe a recently developed new use of frontier analysis and apply this method to calculate country performance indices in three areas: maternal mortality ratio, poverty headcount ratio, and primary school completion rate. Frontier analysis is used to identify the maximum achievable rates of change, defined by the historically best-performing countries, as a function of coverage level. Performance indices are calculated by comparing a country’s rate of change against the maximum achievable rate at the same coverage level. A country’s performance can be positive or negative, corresponding to progression or regression, respectively. The calculated performance indices allow countries to be compared against each other regardless of whether they have only begun to make progress or whether they have almost achieved the target. This paper is the first to use frontier analysis to determine the maximum achievable rates as a function of coverage level and to calculate performance indices for public health, human rights, and international development indicators. The method can be applied to multiple fields and settings, for example health targets such as cessation in smoking or specific vaccine immunizations, and offers both a new approach to analyze existing data and a new data source for consideration when assessing progress achieved.     

Multi-region comparisons of emission performance: The structural decomposition analysis approach

Structural decomposition analysis (SDA) has been widely used by researchers to study changes in carbon emissions or aggregate emission intensity over time in a country. These studies may be called temporal-SDA analysis. Similarly, SDA analysis can be conducted by studying variations in carbon emissions or aggregate emission intensity between countries or between regions in a country, i.e. a decomposition analysis conducted spatially. In spatial-SDA analysis, the objective is often to understand the contributions of factors such as emission intensity, Leontief structure, and final demand in explaining the difference in total carbon emissions or aggregate emission intensities between two countries or regions. We review the literature of spatial-SDA analysis and propose a spatial-SDA framework for multi-region comparisons. Both the additive and multiplicative SDA forms are presented in the framework. Using the framework, 30 geographical regions in China are compared and ranked based on their emission performance. This proposed framework can also be used to evaluate other performance indicators in multi-region comparisons.     

Are the variables used in building composite indicators of well-being relevant? Validating composite indexes of well-being

This paper explores the relevance of the variables that define well-being and human progress and makes a quantitative inquiry into the validity of three of the well-known and well-documented composite indicators of well-being: the Human Development Index (HDI), the Legatum Prosperity Index (LPI) and the Happy Planet Index (HPI). After choosing the key variables that describe most of the objective and subjective dimensions of well-being, we perform cluster analysis to come up with an optimal grouping of countries based on their multidimensional performance on well-being. A comparison of the classifications obtained with the three indexes invalidates the HPI, confirms results obtained for the HDI, and validates for the first time the LPI as a reliable measure of well-being. The optimal cluster structure yields robust results, which correct the rank discrepancies between the HDI and LPI for a large number of countries. It also proves that a robust ranking of countries based on multidimensional well-being can be achieved with a relatively small number of variables, which mitigates the risk of including variables that are not reliable and/or not available for a significant number of countries. The fact that cluster analysis generates results based on similarities between observations and not on computed values based on the aggregation of variables helps overcome problems that may occur due to the distribution of variables and increases its value as a validation method. Therefore, validation results achieved through cluster analysis are more robust and help to achieve a good check of the validity and relevance of the composite indexes, provide an objective perspective that can guide policy-makers and the public in making a fair assessment of actual levels of well-being, and avoid unfounded claims that may overstate it and delay or postpone measures to increase it.     

A PCA-based method for construction of composite sustainability indicators

Purpose

Sustainable manufacturing is practiced globally as a comprehensive strategy for improving the sustainability performance of the manufacturing industry. While sustainability is characterized into such three dimensions as economic, environmental, and social, currently, there is no quantitative method yet to measure the so-called ??sustainability?? in the manufacturing industry. The objective of this research is to develop a comprehensive and effective quantitative method to measure the overall sustainability performance of manufacturing companies.

Methods

In this paper, an integrated methodology is presented for the development of composite sustainability indicators based on principal component analysis (PCA). In developing this integrated approach, both industry and academia surveys are conducted to identify what sustainability indicators are favored by the sustainable manufacturing community. A unique index is then generated to measure the overall sustainability performance of industrial practices. The methodology can be used for benchmarking the overall sustainability performance of various manufacturing companies.

Results

A case study is conducted on a total of 11 global electronic manufacturing companies. The overall sustainability performance of these companies are measured, benchmarked, and ranked. The results showed that PCA is an effective approach for constructing composite sustainability indicators across environmental, economic, and social dimensions.

Conclusions

From this research, it is found that industry and academia have different views on the sustainability measurement, evidenced by different weights put on the same indicator in industry and academia. The case study demonstrated that the methodology presented in this paper is an effective tool for comprehensive measurement of sustainability performance of manufacturing companies. Strengths and weaknesses of each company can be identified. Then, the recommended improvements can be suggested based on the study of each of the individual indicators.     

An overview of sustainability assessment methodologies

Sustainability indicators and composite index are increasingly recognised as a useful tool for policy making and public communication in conveying information on countries and corporate performance in fields such as environment, economy, society, or technological improvement. By visualizing phenomena and highlighting trends, sustainability indicators simplify, quantify, analyse and communicate otherwise complex and complicated information.There are number of initiatives working on indicators and frameworks for sustainable development (SD). This article provides an overview various sustainability indices applied in policy practice. The paper also compiles the information related to sustainability indices formulation strategy, scaling, normalisation, weighting and aggregation methodology.     

WHO Essential Medicines Policies and Use in Developing and Transitional Countries: An Analysis of Reported Policy Implementation and Medicines Use Surveys

Background

Suboptimal medicine use is a global public health problem. For 35 years the World Health Organization (WHO) has promoted essential medicines policies to improve quality use of medicines (QUM), but evidence of their effectiveness is lacking, and uptake by countries remains low. Our objective was to determine whether WHO essential medicines policies are associated with better QUM.

Methods and Findings

We compared results from independently conducted medicines use surveys in countries that did versus did not report implementation of WHO essential medicines policies. We extracted survey data on ten validated QUM indicators and 36 self-reported policy implementation variables from WHO databases for 2002–2008. We calculated the average difference (as percent) for the QUM indicators between countries reporting versus not reporting implementation of specific policies. Policies associated with positive effects were included in a regression of a composite QUM score on total numbers of implemented policies. Data were available for 56 countries. Twenty-seven policies were associated with better use of at least two percentage points. Eighteen policies were associated with significantly better use (unadjusted p<0.05), of which four were associated with positive differences of 10% or more: undergraduate training of doctors in standard treatment guidelines, undergraduate training of nurses in standard treatment guidelines, the ministry of health having a unit promoting rational use of medicines, and provision of essential medicines free at point of care to all patients. In regression analyses national wealth was positively associated with the composite QUM score and the number of policies reported as being implemented in that country. There was a positive correlation between the number of policies (out of the 27 policies with an effect size of 2% or more) that countries reported implementing and the composite QUM score (r = 0.39, 95% CI 0.14 to 0.59, p = 0.003). This correlation weakened but remained significant after inclusion of national wealth in multiple linear regression analyses. Multiple policies were more strongly associated with the QUM score in the 28 countries with gross national income per capita below the median value (US$2,333) (r = 0.43, 95% CI 0.06 to 0.69, p = 0.023) than in the 28 countries with values above the median (r = 0.22, 95% CI −0.15 to 0.56, p = 0.261). The main limitations of the study are the reliance on self-report of policy implementation and measures of medicine use from small surveys. While the data can be used to explore the association of essential medicines policies with medicine use, they cannot be used to compare or benchmark individual country performance.

Conclusions

WHO essential medicines policies are associated with improved QUM, particularly in low-income countries. Please see later in the article for the Editors'' Summary     

Enjeux,défis,opportunités et stratégie durable d’implantation de l’imagerie hybride TEMP/TDM dans un pays à ressources médicales limitées,la Côte d’Ivoire

From HO Anger's analogic gamma camera to digital camera, developed countries are at the time of hybrid cameras SPECT/CT and PET/CT. Sub-Saharan black Africa in the image of Côte d’Ivoire, a country with limited medical resources shows an important delay in the evolution of the health system in general and particularly in medical imaging equipment. The purpose of this paper was to approach the issues, challenges and sustainable strategy for the implementation of hybrid imaging SPECT/CT in a developing country where the rate of morbidity and mortality remains high due to infectious but also cancer diseases because of the inadequacy of the health technical platform. To address these challenges, Côte d’Ivoire like many countries in sub-Saharan Africa with limited medical resources must design, test and develop clinical strategies adapted to developing countries. Health authorities of this country must develop a policy for sustainable financing of medical imaging, including the training of the adequate health personnel according to a model of corporate leadership. In this perspective, Côte d’Ivoire must have a SPECT/CT instead of a simple gamma camera. This would allow to optimize its diagnostic health system in oncology, bone and joint disease and in many other medical disciplines. And especially since the SPECT/CT is a high-performance device that has largely demonstrated its diagnostic efficiency and that can be used as SPECT alone or as isolated CT. In addition, this country should take over digital imaging in the context of cooperation with some countries of Africa and Europe ahead in the field of modern medical imaging, seeking assistance from international organizations (IAEA, RAD-AID, WHO,…). Finally this country should implement methods of assessment, types of performance indicators to guide planning for future projects of its system.     

Phenotypic plasticity and specialization in clonal versus non-clonal plants: A data synthesis

Reproductive strategies can be associated with ecological specialization and generalization. Clonal plants produce lineages adapted to the maternal habitat that can lead to specialization. However, clonal plants frequently display high phenotypic plasticity (e.g. clonal foraging for resources), factors linked to ecological generalization. Alternately, sexual reproduction can be associated with generalization via increasing genetic variation or specialization through rapid adaptive evolution. Moreover, specializing to high or low quality habitats can determine how phenotypic plasticity is expressed in plants. The specialization hypothesis predicts that specialization to good environments results in high performance trait plasticity and specialization to bad environments results in low performance trait plasticity. The interplay between reproductive strategies, phenotypic plasticity, and ecological specialization is important for understanding how plants adapt to variable environments. However, we currently have a poor understanding of these relationships. In this study, we addressed following questions: 1) Is there a relationship between phenotypic plasticity, specialization, and reproductive strategies in plants? 2) Do good habitat specialists express greater performance trait plasticity than bad habitat specialists? We searched the literature for studies examining plasticity for performance traits and functional traits in clonal and non-clonal plant species from different habitat types. We found that non-clonal (obligate sexual) plants expressed greater performance trait plasticity and functional trait plasticity than clonal plants. That is, non-clonal plants exhibited a specialist strategy where they perform well only in a limited range of habitats. Clonal plants expressed less performance loss across habitats and a more generalist strategy. In addition, specialization to good habitats did not result in greater performance trait plasticity. This result was contrary to the predictions of the specialization hypothesis. Overall, reproductive strategies are associated with ecological specialization or generalization through phenotypic plasticity. While specialization is common in plant populations, the evolution of specialization does not control the nature of phenotypic plasticity as predicted under the specialization hypothesis.     

Monitoring Intervention Coverage in the Context of Universal Health Coverage

Monitoring universal health coverage (UHC) focuses on information on health intervention coverage and financial protection. This paper addresses monitoring intervention coverage, related to the full spectrum of UHC, including health promotion and disease prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and palliation. A comprehensive core set of indicators most relevant to the country situation should be monitored on a regular basis as part of health progress and systems performance assessment for all countries. UHC monitoring should be embedded in a broad results framework for the country health system, but focus on indicators related to the coverage of interventions that most directly reflect the results of UHC investments and strategies in each country. A set of tracer coverage indicators can be selected, divided into two groups—promotion/prevention, and treatment/care—as illustrated in this paper. Disaggregation of the indicators by the main equity stratifiers is critical to monitor progress in all population groups. Targets need to be set in accordance with baselines, historical rate of progress, and measurement considerations. Critical measurement gaps also exist, especially for treatment indicators, covering issues such as mental health, injuries, chronic conditions, surgical interventions, rehabilitation, and palliation. Consequently, further research and proxy indicators need to be used in the interim. Ideally, indicators should include a quality of intervention dimension. For some interventions, use of a single indicator is feasible, such as management of hypertension; but in many areas additional indicators are needed to capture quality of service provision. The monitoring of UHC has significant implications for health information systems. Major data gaps will need to be filled. At a minimum, countries will need to administer regular household health surveys with biological and clinical data collection. Countries will also need to improve the production of reliable, comprehensive, and timely health facility data. Please see later in the article for the Editors'' Summary

Summary Points

• Monitoring universal health coverage (UHC) should be integral to overall tracking of health progress and performance, which requires regular assessment of health system inputs (finances, health workforce, and medicines), outputs (service provision), coverage of interventions, and health impacts, as well as the social determinants of health.
• Within this overall context, we propose that UHC monitoring focus on financial protection and intervention coverage indicators, with a strong equity focus. This paper focuses on intervention coverage.
• Progress towards UHC should be tracked using tracer intervention coverage indicators selected on the basis of objective considerations and designed to keep the numbers of indicators small and manageable while covering a range of health interventions to capture the essence of the UHC goal.
• Since UHC is about progressive realization and countries differ in epidemiology, health systems, socioeconomic development, and people''s expectations, the indicator sets will not be the same everywhere.
• Coverage indicators should cover promotion and prevention, as well as treatment, rehabilitation, and palliation. While there are several suitable indicators for the first two, there are major gaps for coverage indicators of treatment, as population need for treatment is difficult to measure.
• A small set of well-established international intervention tracer coverage indicators can be identified for monitoring UHC. Where no good indicators are currently available, proxy indicators and equity analysis of service utilization can provide some insights.
• Special attention needs to be paid to quality of services, either through the tracer indicator itself (referred to as effective coverage) or through additional indicators on quality of services or health impact of the intervention.
• Targets should be set in accordance with baseline, historical rate of progress, and measurement considerations.
• The main data sources of intervention coverage indicators are household surveys and health facility reports. Investments in both are needed to improve the ability of countries to monitor progress towards UHC.
• It is essential to find effective ways of communicating progress towards UHC in ways that are meaningful to the general public and that capture the attention of policy makers.

This paper is part of the PLOS Universal Health Coverage Collection.

     

Measuring the Intangibles: A Metrics for the Economic Complexity of Countries and Products

We investigate a recent methodology we have proposed to extract valuable information on the competitiveness of countries and complexity of products from trade data. Standard economic theories predict a high level of specialization of countries in specific industrial sectors. However, a direct analysis of the official databases of exported products by all countries shows that the actual situation is very different. Countries commonly considered as developed ones are extremely diversified, exporting a large variety of products from very simple to very complex. At the same time countries generally considered as less developed export only the products also exported by the majority of countries. This situation calls for the introduction of a non-monetary and non-income-based measure for country economy complexity which uncovers the hidden potential for development and growth. The statistical approach we present here consists of coupled non-linear maps relating the competitiveness/fitness of countries to the complexity of their products. The fixed point of this transformation defines a metrics for the fitness of countries and the complexity of products. We argue that the key point to properly extract the economic information is the non-linearity of the map which is necessary to bound the complexity of products by the fitness of the less competitive countries exporting them. We present a detailed comparison of the results of this approach directly with those of the Method of Reflections by Hidalgo and Hausmann, showing the better performance of our method and a more solid economic, scientific and consistent foundation.     

Diversity and the economy: a cross-country,comprehensive study

Using Alesina et al.'s (2003) fractionalization indices that separately measure ethnic (E), linguistic (L) and religious (R) diversity for 180 countries, a cluster analysis is performed to group the countries into three distinct clusters based on their similarities in the three diversity measures. Given these country clusters, this study examines how these different clusters perform, on average, in regard to thirteen different economic and political indicators. The results presented for the economic indicators suggest that ethnic and linguistic diversity measures might be relatively more important in affecting economic outcomes compared to religious diversity. In terms of the political indicators considered in this analysis, the countries in the most ethnically, linguistically and religiously diverse cluster performed statistically lower on average relative to the other country clusters.     

Power Law Distributions of Patents as Indicators of Innovation

The total number of patents produced by a country (or the number of patents produced per capita) is often used as an indicator for innovation. Here we present evidence that the distribution of patents amongst applicants within many countries is well-described by power laws with exponents that vary between 1.66 (Japan) and 2.37 (Poland). We suggest that this exponent is a useful new metric for studying innovation. Using simulations based on simple preferential attachment-type rules that generate power laws, we find we can explain some of the variation in exponents between countries, with countries that have larger numbers of patents per applicant generally exhibiting smaller exponents in both the simulated and actual data. Similarly we find that the exponents for most countries are inversely correlated with other indicators of innovation, such as research and development intensity or the ubiquity of export baskets. This suggests that in more advanced economies, which tend to have smaller values of the exponent, a greater proportion of the total number of patents are filed by large companies than in less advanced countries.     

Development of composite sustainability performance index for steel industry

The steel companies are becoming increasingly aware about the sustainability challenges. In order to become a responsible corporate citizen, the industry has responded to these challenges through adoption of pillars of sustainability. The industry has made the beginning with identification of sustainability indicators. The indicators have been developed specifically for steel industry. Generally, it is quite difficult to evaluate the performance of company on the basis of large number of sustainability indicators. Integration of key sustainability indicators is quite essential for decision-making. Composite indicators are an innovative approach to evaluate sustainable performance. This paper presents a method for development of composite sustainability performance index (CSPI) that addresses the sustainable performance of steel industries along all the three pillars of sustainability—economic, environmental and societal. Organizational governance and technical aspects have also been considered fourth and fifth dimensions of sustainability.The objective of this paper is to introduce sustainability and to present a conceptual decision model, using analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to assist in evaluating the impact of an organization's sustainability performance. AHP has been used to determine the weights at various levels. Sub-indices have been evaluated and aggregated to form CSPI. The effectiveness of the proposed model is evaluated in a case study for a major steel company in India.     

Genetic effects on task performance,but not on age polyethism,in a swarm-founding eusocial wasp

Division of labour among workers in insect societies often includes two major components: age-related changes in behaviour (age polyethism) and specialization in task performance. The aim of this study was to test whether similarity in inside-nest task performance and in rate of age polyethism correspond to genetic similarity among nestmates in the polygynous eusocial waspPolybia aequatorialis.Behavioural data were collected on marked, known-age workers from three source colonies introduced into two observation colonies in the field. Genetic similarity among workers was assessed by quantifying sharing of random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) marker alleles. Workers were categorized by whether they engaged in nest cleaning as an indicator of individual differences in inside-nest task performance. Within source colonies, workers that performed nest-cleaning tasks were more genetically similar to each other than they were to workers not performing these tasks. Workers also differed in their rates of passage through the age-related task sequence, but no association was found between sharing of RAPD marker alleles and rate of age polyethism. These results accord with earlier studies demonstrating flexibility in age polyethism in swarm-founding wasps, and with findings that worker genotypic variability corresponds to specialization in task performance inP. aequatorialis. Polybiaspp. workers rarely switch among tasks, even in response to changes in colony conditions, and workers’ genotypes may constrain flexibility in task performance at the individual level. Conversely, colonies may accrue benefits from having genotypically diverse worker forces, which could favour the maintenance of polygyny in swarm-founding wasps.     

Measuring Sustainability Efficiency Using a Two‐Stage Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

In this article, we apply an additive two‐stage data envelopment analysis estimator on a panel of 20 countries with advanced economies for the time period 1990–2011 in order to create a composite sustainability efficiency index. We use a window‐based approach in order to study the countries over the years. The sustainability efficiency index is decomposed into production efficiency and eco‐efficiency indicators. The results reveal inequalities among the examined countries between the two stages. The eco‐efficiency stage is characterized by large inequalities among countries and significantly lower efficiency scores than the overall sustainability efficiency and the production efficiency. Finally, it is reported that a country's high production efficiency level does not ensure a high eco‐efficiency performance.     

Local adaptation and ecological genetics of host-plant specialization in a leaf beetle

The tendency of insect species to evolve specialization to one or a few plant species is probably a major reason for the remarkable diversity of herbivorous insects. The suggested explanations for this general trend toward specialization include a range of evolutionary mechanisms, whose relative importance is debated. Here we address two potentially important mechanisms: (i) how variation in the geographic distribution of host use may lead to the evolution of local adaptation and specialization; (ii) how selection for specialization may lead to the evolution of trade‐offs in performance between different hosts. We performed a quantitative genetic experiment of larval performance in three different populations of the alpine leaf beetle Oreina elongata reared on two of its main host plants. Due to differences in host availability, each population represents a distinctly different selective regime in terms of host use including selection for specialization on one or the other host as well as selection for utilizing both hosts during the larval stage. The results suggest that selection for specialization has lead to some degree of local adaptations in host use: both single‐host population had higher larval growth rate on their respective native host plant genus, while there was no difference between plant treatments in the two‐host population. However, differences between host plant treatments within populations were generally small and the degree of local adaptation in performance traits seems to be relatively limited. Genetic correlations in performance traits between the hosts ranged from zero in the two‐host population to significantly positive in the single‐host populations. This suggests that selection for specialization in single host populations typically also increased performance on the alternative host that is not naturally encountered. Moreover, the lack of a positive genetic correlation in the two host‐population give support for the hypothesis that performance trade‐offs between two host plants may typically evolve when a population have adapted to both these plants. We conclude that although there is selection for specialization in larval performance traits it seems as if the genetic architecture of these traits have limited the divergence between populations in relative performance on the two hosts.     

Composite Subsidence Vulnerability Assessment Based on an Index Model and Index Decomposition Method

The threat of damage to buildings and other infrastructures resulting from land subsidence associated with groundwater pumping in urbanized areas is an ongoing problem requiring assessment. An important goal of subsidence vulnerability assessment is to construct a composite subsidence vulnerability index (SVI) that is represented by a set of indicators that focuses on four different thematic factors: physical, social, economic, and environmental vulnerability. These indicators are evaluated on the basis of indicator selection principles and then weighted by their contribution rate to the overall index. The weights reflect different measures assigned to the township-specific conditions. A complete and composite subsidence vulnerability assessment is developed in which future vulnerability management decision-making processes can be readily made. The vulnerability assessment includes not only the construction of the SVI, which involves selecting, assigning value to, weighting, and aggregating the vulnerability indicators, but also the presentation of the SVI decomposition. Research results demonstrate that a composite subsidence vulnerability assessment method can be made by first constructing and then decomposition-presenting the overall SVI. This allows for the relative comparison of subsidence vulnerability and the identification of the main vulnerable indicators; thus providing subsidence risk, which represents an important step toward vulnerability management of water resources.     

The quantitative research of composite immune indicator for crustacean

Through analyzing the immunity indicators in recent crustacean research, two defects are pointed in comprehensive immunity evaluation, 1) the integrant indicators cannot comprehensively reflect the change of immunity, and 2) the conclusions that obtained from different indicators of immunity level cannot be compared objectively and scientifically. Basing on that, the paper firstly indicated that the immunity system could be regarded as a composite indicator. Secondly, the paper gave the specific definition of the composite immunity indicator (CII), and discussed the methods of calculation, especially provided two calculation methods of the weights, that is, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Finally, examples were given to clarify the specific steps to compute the composite immunity indicator. The computing results gave the quantitative evaluation, which were in concordance with the existing conclusions.