Inequality of Opportunity in School Education: the Role of Territorial Factors

This study measures the impact of spatial factors on the educational achievements of Russian students. According to the theory of equal opportunities, individual achievements depend on two groups of determinants: uncontrollable circumstances and one’s own efforts. Inequality of achievements produced by inequality of effort is treated as ethically acceptable, while inequality arising from circumstances is unfair and therefore must be compensated. The research is based on the data of the International Program for the Assessment of Educational Achievements of Students (PISA), wave 2018. Multilevel regression modeling was applied. A two-level model was used, in which the first level is that of the student, while the second level is regional. The calculations showed that anywhere from 14 to 16% of the variance in Russian students’ academic achievements is attributed to interregional irregularities. We learned that controlling for socio-economic status, lack of staff and material support in the school, type of area in which the school is located, and gender of the student make it possible to slightly reduce the role of regional differences, though it still remained significant. To a certain extent the impact of regional factor can be explained by variations in the influence of family background, school characteristics and gender across regions. The estimation of regional random effects allowed for identifying both the leaders and the outsiders in terms of the availability and quality of school education. Calculations have shown that the leaders and outsiders are practically the same in regards to all three areas of literacy.

Russian Parental Values in the international Context, 1990/1991–2017/2020

The aim of the paper is to analyze parental values in Russia and 33 other countries, and explore how they’ve changed between 1990 and 2017–2020. Russian dynamics are shown on 7 waves, international — on 2 waves. We used a combination of data from the World Values Survey and the European Values Study. We found that in 1990 the Russian value agenda in regards to children was essentially directed towards survival. By 2017–2020 certain changes had occurred: Russians no longer considered survival values to be as important (such as hard work, thrift, obedience); self-expression values (e.g., independence and imagination) became more popular; humanistic values lost much of their importance for Russians. In 33 countries humanistic values remained as popular as in 1990, while survival values seem to be less important. Russian parental values change in the same direction as do Russian personal values.

What can Analysis of the Organizations’ Web Sites tell us about AI? Comparative Study of the Online Resources operated at Google, Yandex, and Baidu

The current social and cultural debates on AI and how it is being embedded into the reality of social life have reignited scientific debates on how to study AI, what counts as data, and the conditions under which information and data pertaining AI turn into knowledge. In this paper the authors’ focus was exploring new sources of data on AI and methods of AI phenomena examination. The paper presents the results of a comparative analysis of Google, Yandex, and Baidu’s websites. Contrary to these companies commonly being perceived as online search engines, Google, Baidu, and Yandex have multiple offerings across mobile products and services, knowledge products, translation services, open platforms for startups, PC client software and AI technologies. In the first part of the paper the authors compare information presented on these companies’ websites about their goals, their technologies, how they define AI, the proclaimed social problems associated with using AI, and the forms of interaction between these companies and their audiences. The second part of the paper analyzes 20 projects that won the Google AI Impact Challenge contest. Analyzing these projects allowed for identifying areas of application of AI technologies inside and outside organizations, for characterizing AI’s potential roles as a mediator in relations between people, and finally for highlighting utopian and dystopian scenarios associated with implementing AI in social relations. In the conclusion the authors formulate a set of broader questions for social analytics concerning artificial intelligence grounded in the results of their analysis.

The Social Status of the elderly from a Comparative Perspective: distinctions of Post-communist Countries

Social status reflects the hierarchical position of social groups within society, their prestige as perceived by members of their society. The existing literature shows that age groups differ in their status considerably across countries, and that their status is linked to socio-economic modernization. This study investigates the determinants of elderly people’s status in post-communist countries in comparison to other countries. Using two large international datasets — from the World Values Survey (58 countries) and European Social Survey (29 countries) — as well as multilevel regressions, we found that elderly people in post-communist countries were at the bottom of the status hierarchy. Compared to other regions of the world, this low status was only in part explained by country modernization level, implying that some other factors may have had an effect. Moreover, only in postcommunist countries the perceived status of older people decreased with respondent’s age. We suggest that the low status of older people in post-communist countries was caused by the social and economic transformations that followed the fall of the communist regime — which led to the older generation losing human capital — and then exacerbated by the ageist legacy of the Soviet industrialist ideology. Finally, we insist that the very low status of older people is a problem of society as a whole rather than this particular age group.

Anti-crisis Transformation of Corporate Culture in Russian Companies During the COVID-19 Pandemic

From April 2020 to August 2021 the Public Opinion Foundation conducted a study of the top management of small, medium and large businesses in a pandemic. We focused on “success stories” and on what characteristics of a company determine its survival. Despite the pandemic crisis these organizations were successfully able to adapt, they launched new products and processes, their teams stayed consolidated and in some cases even grew to accommodate new functions. One of the factors of a company’s success and its survival in a crisis is having a system of values shared by all team members, which is an integral part of corporate culture. The heads of companies point out: taking care of the collective means to make a very profitable investment in business development. During the crisis, corporate culture helped managers to preserve a tightly knit team around them, create a certain work atmosphere in the collective and inspire employees to continue growing. This article examines different levels of corporate culture, showing the role of each of them when it comes to the survival of a business in a pandemic crisis. The text also contains the results of a case study and content analysis of 70 in-depth interviews with company leaders, reflecting changes in corporate culture given an ongoing pandemic. Particular attention is paid to the transformation of the role of the business leader. In the final section we consider the specifics of culture for businesses of various sizes, and then summarize the results by outlining areas for future research.

The Social Functions of a rural Teacher (on the Example of the Altai Territory and the Altai Republic)

This article aims to evaluate the social duties of rural teachers, and is linked to an attempt to identify internal non-economic resources to help solve pressing issues associated with village life (including the problems of alienation of fellow villagers, the spread of alcoholism, unemployment, etc.). We set out to test the hypothesis that a rural teacher serves as an active participant in village life. This work is based on the methodological resources of village sociology, sociology of education, as well as approaches formed within the framework of problems associated with social well-being and quality of life. The results obtained from a study based on a semi-structured interview conducted in rural areas of the Altai Territory and the Altai Republic (N = 124) allowed for determining both the social functions of teachers and how they’re linked to the specifics of the profession. In addition the article analyzes the role of the village teacher in ensuring the resilience of the villagers. Resilience has been found to be associated with values and norms rooted in village areas (family, health, work, etc.), and often the village teacher is involved in preserving these values and norms. They provide support and assistance in solving a specific social problem (raising children, overcoming difficult life situations, socializing adults and children, etc.). The issue of active participation of teachers in the integration of the village community is also raised. We were able to identify which activities initiated by the village teacher are aimed at consolidating the villagers and their participation in the diverse life of their native village. All participants of the study stated that the integration of the village community is a necessity in this day and age. Such a function of teachers as interacting with authorities and public organizations was also identified. The example of the Altai Territory and the Altai Republic shows that village teachers as a professional group actively participate in solving the village’s problems, acquiring the status of a defender of the village.

The Perception of Cyber and Traditional Risks: Experience of Using the Psychometric Paradigm Approach

This article presents the results of using the “psychometric paradigm” methodology (P. Slovic, B. Fischhoff, S. Lichtenstein and others) to study the perception of cyber risks and compare them to other risks designated as “traditional”. The respondents in an online survey were presented seven cyber risks (from computer games to hacker attacks and viruses) and 65 traditional risks (from natural disasters to nuclear power plants and terrorism), assessed based on 8 characteristics. As a result, computer games were perceived differently compared to other cyber risks: first of all, they do not induce fear. Other cyber risks are concentrated in an area of relatively obscure and moderately frightening risks, but they do not form a separate cluster. Radiation therapy, herbicides and pesticides are the closest to cyber risks in the two-dimensional space of risk perception. The results of this pilot survey may be considered a reflection of the sample used, where the main participants were active Internet users who were able to distinguish between the presented cyber risks.

Bots in Public Arenas of Social Networks

In the study of social bots, one of the important trends is the transition from a technology-centered understanding of bots as a threat to information and computer security to a broader, socially-focused understanding of bots as a new tool of informational influence used by various social actors in online social networks. This transition is of value to modern sociology. As one such actor, the authors consider a group of civic activists who use bot-technology to construct and solve the problem of defrauded equity holders. The novelty of the article lies in the interpretation of this group’s activities in the context of the concept of public arenas. The botnet “Deceived equity holders of LenSpecStroy” was detected thanks to the author’s complex methodology that combined the method of frequency analysis of messages, profiling of bot accounts, including static and behavioral analysis of user profiles, statistical analysis of texts, analysis of the botnet’s structural organization, analysis of the content of its publications, and analysis of bursts of network publication activity. Analyzing these bursts of publication activity and the content of botnet publications showed how bot-technologies aided in implementing effective techniques aimed at constructing and maintaining the social problem of defrauded equity holders: expanding the capacity of the public arena, realizing (creating) dramaturgical novelty and emotional richness in discussing the problem, taking into account the organizational specifics of the public arena, directing interest in the problem towards other (related and equally important) public arenas (media, legislative and executive power, political parties).

“Intersubjectivity”: The Emergence of a Socio-Phenomenological Concept

The article outlines the author’s vision of the formation and development of “intersubjectivity” as a concept of socially oriented thought. Introduced into sociohumanitarian knowledge by E. Husserl’s phenomenology, this notion initially possessed powerful sociological potential and was called to explain on an abstract-philosophical level the existence of social order from an egological perspective (which is the perspective of a subject with a sphere of consciousness that other participants of interaction have no access to). The main tendency inherent to the post-Husserlian change in the concept’s semantic profile is linked to the gradual loss of its metaphysical potential, as well as its psychologization and instrumentalization. Intersubjectivity — which is something that was brought into sociology by A. Schütz’s social phenomenology — gained a pragmatic interpretation, effectively becoming an axiomatically presupposed attribute of the “life world”. Constructivist semantic valences of the analyzed concept were implemented in the social constructivism of P. Berger and T. Lukman, and at this point said concept had pretty much exhausted its initial analytical potential. The reinvigoration of sociological interest towards this category is associated with a postclassical redirection of attention towards interactive processes of generating meanings within situations of the “life world”, processes that are multidimensional, conditioned by context and cannot be fully reduced to just the subject. The matter of whether returning to Husserl’s intuitions is appropriate demands further consideration, in order to consider other interpretations of intersubjectivity, including those that focus on the historical course of the social process.

Russian Regional Politicians’ Income and Property Declarations: a Pilot Study and Quality Assessment of Administrative Data

The article presents the experience of converting non-targeted administrative data into research data, using as an example data on the income and property of deputies from local legislative bodies of the Russian Federation for 2019, collected as part of anticorruption operations. This particular empirical fragment was selected for the pilot study of administrative data, which includes assessing the possibility of integrating scattered fragments of information into a single database, assessing quality of data and their relevance for solving research problems, particularly analysis of high-income strata and the apparent trends towards individualization of private property. The system of indicators for assessing data quality includes their timeliness, availability, interpretability, reliability, comparability, coherence, errors of representation and measurement, and relevance. In the case of the data set in question, measurement errors are more common than representation errors. Overall the article emphasizes the notion that introducing new non-target data into circulation requires their preliminary testing, while data quality assessment becomes distributed both in time and between different subjects. The transition from created data to «obtained» data shifts the functions of evaluating its quality from the researcher-creator to the researcheruser. And though in this case data quality is in part ensured by the legal support for their production, the transformation of administrative data into research data involves assessing a variety of quality measurements — from availability to uniformity and accuracy.