Journal Our Society Archive

The following text presents the results of sociological survey, conducted by Center for Public Opinion Research, Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, in september 2009. This extensive field survey mapped attitudes and public opinion on selected topics and issues that touch the twentieth anniversary of the November revolution in 1989.

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Pirate parties are new phenomena in politics. The first pirate party was established in Sweden in 2006 and inspired rise of pirate parties across the world. The aim of this article is to review discussion on pirate parties, describe major pirate issues and pirate parties’ sympathizers as well as to attempt to explain the rise of pirate parties. Pirate parties may be conceived as a sort of liberal parties, which are focused on free internet, communication and unrestrained access to public information.

This article describes the results of an initial survey which is a part of broader project of sociological research into the historical consciousness of inhabitants of the Czech Republic. Firstly, the topic is put into the context of conceptions of historical consciousness and collective memory. This is followed by an outline of the public's interests in history and its different fields, their sources of information and self-evaluation of historical knowledge.

The article focuses on the description of the Czech religiosity. It shows that Czech society is not as secularized as it is often argued. First part of the article analyzes the traditional measures of religiosity: church affiliation and church attendance. Using data from the Census and ISSP 2008, we show that the level of church attendance is relatively stable in the Czech society but the self-declared church affiliation is decreasing.

This theoretical essay explores the concepts of cultural and popcultural citizenships in connection with the period of state socialism in 70s and 80s in Czechoslovakia. The main intention is to test the potential of the concept of popcultural citizenship, which is inspired by John Hartley´s “do-it-yourself citizenship”. Another aim is to examine textual properties of so called “normalization” television serials with regard to the extent to which it allowed for semiosis to be controlled by the viewers.

The article focuses on leisure activities in the Czech Republic. After the introductory part defining leisure and its functions, data from the international research ISSP 2007 Leisure and Sport are analyzed. Frequencies of 13 leisure activities and perceived functions of leisure are described and the Czech results are briefly compared with the average of 18 European countries. Then attention is paid to the structure of leisure activities in the Czech society.

The aim of the study is to explore the valence theory’s account of voter turnout using open-ended questions which measured the main reason given by voters for electoral abstention. The focus was on the claim of the valence theory concerning the respondent’s expected benefit from participating in an election. Data from five post-election studies undertaken between 2004 and 2010 are analysed. The empirical results reveal that electoral abstention is explained by four key factors.

The article deals with relationship of religiosity and psycho-social phenomena (powerlessness, normlessness, social isolation, self-estrangement and cultural estrangement) which are inhibiting factor in relation to quality of life of individuals. Theoretically this article (besides general theory of subjective quality of life) is supported by Melvinem Seeman´s concept of alienation. Personal religiosity is not measured here by individual indicator only but by plurality of indicators.

Moravcová, Eva. „Jaká je ochota občanů spolupracovat s policií a co ji ovlivňuje?“ Naše společnost 11 (1): 47-56, http://dx.doi.org/10.13060/1214-438X.2013.11.1.5

The majority of crime is not detected by the police itself. Its work, if it is to be effective, depends heavily on the people’s willingness to cooperate with the police. The paper compares the degree of such cooperation between the Czech Republic and other European countries that participated on the ESS R 5 research and focuses on factors influencing the cooperation. Education, feelings of safety when walking alone in local areas after dark and satisfaction with police officers´ treatment all play an important role in explaining people’s willingness to cooperate with the police.  Further, results of the analyses show that the Czech Republic and other post-communist countries alike suffer from relatively low legitimacy of the police as well as low degree of public cooperation with this institution. Moreover, the data suggest that perceived legitimacy of the police is considerably influenced by public trust in it and perception of its transparency. However, these seem to be still relatively low in the Czech Republic.

Wawrosz, Petr; Herbert Heissler. „Vybrané bariéry investic do lidského kapitálu.“ Naše společnost 11 (1): 36-46, http://dx.doi.org/10.13060/1214-438X.2013.11.1.4

If investments into human capital (HC) are as convenient as theory says why some people do not invest in the development of their HC and why other people with resources do not stimulate people without HC to invest including lending money for such investments? The paper tries to answer the question by identifying selected barriers causing lenders do not give money (resources) to the investments and potential borrowers are not willing to borrow them. From our point of view statistical discrimination and phenomena described as “acting-white” in the case of Afro-American community belong among the most important barriers, although they are not mentioned so often. The paper deals with both of the barriers and suggests how to solve them.

Chábová, Kristýna. „Komparace metodických postupů předvolebních průzkumů agentur CVVM, ppm factum, Median a STEM.“ Naše společnost 11 (1): 25-35, http://dx.doi.org/10.13060/1214-438X.2013.11.1.3

This article deals with the issue of pre-election polling and examines the methodological approaches used in pre-election polling in the Czech Republic. A selection of Czech research agencies is presented and explored, as well as the recommendations of various professional associations.  The core of this work examines and compares the methodological approaches used by the Czech agencies CVVM, ppm factum, Median and STEM. The aim of this article is to highlight the differences in the methodological approaches among the Czech agencies and to determine whether these differences could eventually affect the outcomes of pre-election polls.

Čermák, Daniel. 2013. „Změny voličského chování ve volbách do krajských zastupitelstev 2012." Naše společnost 11 (1): 15-24, http://dx.doi.org/10.13060/1214-438X.2013.11.1.2

This paper presents findings about changes in voting behaviour that occurred between elections into Regional Councils 2008 and 2012 in the Czech Republic. The analysis deals with comparison of real outcomes of elections 2012 and the outcomes of elections 2012 estimated by a statistical model called LOCCONTINGENCY. The estimation is based on regional structure of votes for political parties in the previous elections into Regional Councils 2008. The main objective of these analyses is to find out and to explain differences between reality and model estimation. The results help us explain the rise and decline of votes for political parties, especially for regional ones, between elections 2008 and 2012.

Linek, Lukáš. 2013. „Rostoucí sociální nerovnosti ve volební účasti v Česku v letech 1990-2010." Naše společnost 11 (1): 3-14, http://dx.doi.org/10.13060/1214-438X.2013.11.1.1

The aim of this paper is to analyze the social and class inequalities in turnout in the Czech Republic between 1990 and 2010. Thus, the study focuses on a description of the evolution of the relationship between turnout and key characteristics of socio-economic status: education, income and social class. This research utilizes a pooled cross-sectional post-election survey dataset from the Czech Republic fielded over two decades; and employs standard statistical methods, i.e. contingency tables and convergence models, to analyze change in turnout among population subgroups. There are signs of a gradual crystallization of both social and class inequalities in electoral participation. Convergence models reveal a linear increase in educational and class inequalities in turnout. In the case of income, however, this study finds evidence of a crystallization of income based inequalities in participation rather than a growth in inequalities per se.

The electronic version of the first number of the eleventh edition of the review Czech Society (Naše společnost). Czech Society issues Center for Public Opinion Research, Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

This study employs a range of up-to-date statistical information, including the findings of two nationwide surveys conducted on the author’s behalf, to evaluate current perceptions of Slovak in the Czech Republic. Where appropriate, the results are compared with the evidence of other questionnaires.

The article deals with cross-border cooperation which has become since the 1990´s an indelible element of the regional development of the Czech borderland areas. The paper presents the results of a research focusing on the positions of the Czech inhabitants living on the borderland of the Czech Republic and the cross-border cooperation issues. The research carried out in 2008 by the Public Opinion Research Centre (CVVM) showed that the inhabitants of the Czech Republic perceive the image of the borderland areas not as negatively as can be seen from previous studies on the same topic.

This article deals with problems of religiosity research in sociology. First I concentrate on more general topics connected with religiosity research as is cross-country validity of survey instruments or relationship of theoretical concepts and empirical indicators in sociological surveys. Another part is about attending religious ceremonies which is one of the most significant (statistically as well as substantially) indicators in religiosity research.

The article is divided into three main parts. In the first part, an overview of scholarly views on trust/trustworthiness is provided. The second part is concerned with the issue of how the politicians’ trustworthiness is measured by contemporary research agencies. In the third part, the experiment on politicians’ trustworthiness utilizing a new method is reported. This method is based on indirect questioning and it builds on the hypothesis that the more trustworthy a politician is, the more people will agree with his statements and consider them seriously. Four parallel questionnaires were employed. The first questionnaire (N=53) contained 10 short fictitious quotations and subjects were asked to rate them according to their solidness, acceptability, and positivity, and they were asked to say to what extent did they agree with them. Five of these quotations were used in the next three questionnaires (N=48;47;42) and the names of five Czech politicians (K. Schwarzenberg, A. Vondra, R. John, V. Filip and B. Sobotka) were attached to them. No name was attached to the same quotation twice. Respondents were divided into four independent groups and each group responded to one questionnaire. The independent two-sample t-test was used for the comparison of the ratings and 20 statistically significant results were obtained. This means the method could be one of the keys for a better future understanding of such a complex notion as the trustworthiness of politicians is.

This article examines the relationship between voter turnout (or, precisely, turnout intention) and variables related to the perception of the election campaign in the broader context of the other types of variables such as basic socio-demographic or political characteristics. The data used in this analysis are from surveys conducted during the period of three month before elections in 2010. All of the surveys were designed as public opinion polls and approximately 1000 Czech adults were interviewed nationwide at the beginning of each month. To explain the relationship between voter turnout (or rather a kind of readiness to vote) and the perception of the campaign, the binary logistic regression was chosen and three models were created. In relation to voter turnout, in addition to basic socio-demographic characteristics, the variables related to the perception of the election campaign are statistically significant, too. In the extended model, however, it is showed that behind the effects of most of them stands the rate of interest in politics. The only variable, which draws on a basis other than the interest in politics, proved to be awareness and acceptance of campaign influence on own voting behaviour. The frequency of consumption of media content proved to be more important than age, education and living standards. However, again behind these variables stands the interest in politics. Therefore, the interest in politics appears to be essential in relation to voter turnout in our analysis.

The article deals with developments of the Internet elections project in Norway. The project for the time being peaked with the 2011 municipal and regional elections, in which voters in ten municipalities were entitled to cast their votes over the Internet. The article firstly analyses Internet elections pilot projects and discusses results of surveys focused on key preconditions of the Internet elections within the framework of the digital divide concept. Furthermore, the article is concerned with results of the Internet elections in terms of several key variables: ratio of those, who cast their vote over the Internet depending on their place of residence, party preferences and age. In spite of a high level of Internet penetration in Norway surveys and the Norwegian Internet elections have confirmed existence of two sub-types of digital divide: social divide and democratic divide.

The paper focuses on the union formation in later life using SHARELIFE data from 13 European countries. First, it shows that proportion of single individuals aged 50-69 and the proportion of those who (re)partner vary significantly across European countries. The highest levels of (re)partnering were observed in Scandinavia and the lowest in Southern and Central Europe. Second, it shows that women are much less likely to enter a new coresidential union than men in all studied countries but the relative difference between men and women vary. The smallest difference was observed in Scandinavia and the Czech Republic, the largest in Southern Europe, Austria, and Switzerland. Third, repartnered individuals tend to be younger, more educated, and more likely divorced than widowed comparing to those who stay single.

The electronic version of the first number of the tenth edition of the review Czech Society (Naše společnost). Czech Society issues Center for Public Opinion Research, Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

The text has two parts. The first part attempts to give a broader overview of empirical sociological research in the Czech Republic on the basis of available data from project databases. The main producers of empirical research in the Czech Republic and the thematic focus of this research are then analyzed. In the second part of the article the access to the already available data sources is described, especially to those data files that are stored in the Sociological Data Archive. Important international surveys, which took place also in the Czech Republic and access to data files from this projects is then presented.

This article deals with the analysis of public opinion in the non-European countries and with their view about the European Union. The study is not yet an analysis of foreign and trade policies of these countries, but it based on the opinions of their inhabitants. The citizens of these countries assessed the EU as "soft power" and as an economic superpower. Highly valued are the activities in the field of peaceful reconstruction of the former war regions, however, it is alleged that it uses few use its economical potential in resolving conflicts. However the Union is criticized for their protectionist policies in the import. Politically remains the union largely unimportant player in international relations.

The article of a mostly empirical character is drawn from archive data, from the sources of the Centre for Public Opinion Research, and from the first phase of the undertaking of a project of the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic entitled "The Sociological Research of the Historical Consciousness of Inhabitants of the Czech Republic". The theoretical part of the text is based on the concept of collective memory, especially on the idea of the selectivity and changeability of contents saved in the memory. This article also presents quantitative data concerning the perspective held by public opinion on Czech history, and qualitative perspectives on historical consciousness attained through the use of focus groups.