Relations, Attitudes

The respondents consider their family environment to be the most important part of their lives: the family was rated as very important by 83 %, the children by 72 % and the partner by 71 % of citizens. Parents are very important for about two thirds of respondents (68 %). For most of the people, work represents a high value - for 54 % of people it is very important, for 31 % quite important. Similarly but a little less, respondents value friends - for 51 % of respondents friends play an important role, for 40 % quite an important role in their lives.

Premarital sexual activities are judged by the Czech public in a very tolerant way, almost 50 % of respondents think that such relations are usually good and another 33 % consider them as always being good. A total of 11 % of respondents were against “sex before marriage” (regarded as mostly or always bad).

On the other hand, the attitude towards adultery in marriage is not as tolerant, 34 % see it as always bad and 48 % of respondents as mostly bad.

Today, more than a half of respondents (56 %) express satisfaction with their personal life, 29 % are "neither satisfied nor dissatisfied" and with 14 % dissatisfaction dominates. In the last five years these figures have changed only minimally. The survey also focused on prevalence of optimism and scepticism from the point of view of the respondents’ own future, and future of those close to them, the future of the population of the CZ and mankind as such.

The March survey touched on the problem of tolerance in society, the understanding, which is shown to various specific social groups. Respondents were asked to choose which of such groups they would not want to have as neighbours. From their response it became obvious that people have the most reserved attitude towards the worst-form of alcoholics (86 %) and drug users (85 %). Citizens of Romany origin are often (79 %) rejected as well as people with a criminal past (78 %).

If now people in the Czech Republic had a chance to choose any country, in which they would like to live, the majority would select the Czech Republic. The prevailing mother tongue in the territory of the Czech Republic is Czech language; other languages mentioned in the survey did not exceed the level of a statistical error. Apart from Czech, which is used for communicating in the household by almost everybody, German, English and Slovak are most frequently used as a common language.

Coexistence of Romanies and the rest of the population is perceived by a large part of the public as being problematic. While in general, relations between people at the place, where they live, were described as bad only by 16.4 % of respondents, in the case of coexistence of Romanies and other citizens in their neighbourhoods critical opinions were voiced by a half (50.5 %) of respondents of those that before had said that in the vicinity of the place, where they lived, there were some Romanies living.

From the nationalities living in this country, we have the best relations with citizens of the Czech nationality and Slovaks. Czechs also find likeable Poles and Germans. On the other hand, we think that citizens from the former USSR and Balkan states are least likeable, and our worst relation is with Romanies. When evaluating our relations with nationalities in general, first place was occupied by Czechs and Slovaks, after them French, Swedes, English and Poles.

Liberal answers prevailed for questions relating to marriage and partnership, on the other hand the last statements relating to parenthood and bringing up children were answered with conservative opinions. The most controversial question was the one asking for the opinion on justification of an abortion, if there is a risk to the health of the woman or the child. On this issue, respondents equally split into same-sized opposing groups.

When comparing the actual data and the ideal there is a certain problem lying in the fact that while the survey covers respondents of all age categories over 15 years of age, people involved in reproduction are aged mostly between 20 to 35 years of age. Therefore, the opinions of the youngest respondents, in our case people under 30, are decisive. Compared with the other respondents, this group also partially differed in its opinions, when they more often consider 30 years or more to be the ideal age of newly-weds and mothers of the first child.

In the January Public Opinion Research Centre survey, a question from the ISSP international survey, which took place in the Czech Republic in 1999, was used. The target was to establish if and how the opinions of the public about premarital and out-of-marriage sex as well as sex between partners of the same sex had changed. Premarital sexual activities were valued in the most tolerant way, out-of-marriage sexual relations of married women and men are not seen that forgivingly.