Journal Our Society Archive

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

Increasing policy feasibility is a frequent argument for policyIncreasing policy feasibility is a frequent argument for policyrelevance of research on public attitudes to policies. Therefore,this text discusses the interlinkage of public opinion and thepolicy-making process. The text focuses on the role of publicopinion surveys as a source of information about public attitudestowards policies and policy instruments. Following a discussionof conditions of policy responsiveness related to pollmeasures of public support, public support is argued to emergefrom public opinion as a communication process or a processof social organization, rather than to reflect a collective state ofmind. As such, public support constitutes one of many possibleresults of the public opinion communication process – a resultwhich is temporary and thenceforth subject to the ongoingprocess. It is not reducible to survey responses as expressionsof individual attitudes toward policies, which present an oversimplifiedand partial picture of reality. Surveys, however, constitutean important source of information for researchers andpolicy makers. Therefore, we need to use and interpret themaccordingly. Some recommendations are proposed to improvethe current practice.

Based on empirical data, contemporary Czech Republic is considered to be more secular than Slovakia. The differences between these countries have been described by the way of rates of traditional forms of religiosity in society. The declining share of the religious population is often explained through the secularisation thesis. From this perspective, the process of secularisation entails decreasing importance of religion in everyday life, and it is associated with the modernisation process. Nevertheless, both religious and non-religious worldviews have an impact on people’s decisions in their everyday lives. In addressing their daily needs, individuals rely in their rational calculus on the values and opinions stemming from their worldview.

The paper presents an application of a mixed-methods designThe paper presents an application of a mixed-methods designin the study of interethnic attitudes (prejudice). Its goal is toanalyze the relationship between attitudes towards the Romaand contacts with members of this group. Both quantitative andqualitative empirical material is used here and methodologically,the analysis presented seeks to verify the applicability, limitsand usefulness of mixed methods for prejudice research. Theoretically,the text is based on the contact hypothesis, whichmainly holds that contacts with members of a group that istargeted by prejudice lower the level of prejudice towards thegroup as a whole. It was formulated by Gordon Allport in the1950s and developed later by authors like Thomas Pettigrewor Linda Tropp. The premises of the contact hypothesis are appliedin the case of attitudes towards the Roma in the CzechRepublic. Mixed-methods design provides the methodologicalframework for this study. A secondary analysis of quantitativesurveys (by the Public Opinion Research Centre) is followed(enriched and deepened) by a primary analysis of qualitativesemi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of membersof the Czech majority. This mixed design is intended toachieve more comprehensive and convincing results comparedto a single-method (either qualitative or quantitative) approach.

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

This article focuses on methods for measuring corruption, first describing three generations of corruption indicators and then comparing them qualitatively and quantitatively. Corruption is a clandestine activity that is extremely difficult to measure; there are no official statistics on the number of corruption cases. For this reason, corruption can only be measured indirectly, by various proxies, and it is extremely hard to state whether these indicators are reliable and indeed measure the corruption phenomena in a given country. A large number of different indicators have been developed over the years that try to capture and quantify corruption. Some authors measure perceptions of corruption, others try to use “hard data” to explore the level of corruption in a country, and even others combine different measurements, weight them, and then publish composite indicators to capture the overall level of corruption in a country.

Non-random selection of reproductive partners in the human population, i.e. assortative mating, has been a stable occurrence for decades and across societies, including the Czech Republic. Social sciences have paid primary attention to homogamy, marriage between similar partners, also due to its potential impact on society. High levels of homogamy in a society may imply high closedness of the different groups, prevent social mobility, suggest racial tensions, or lead to higher inequality.

The goal of this article is to inform social scientists, especially those of a quantitative orientation, about the basic characteristics of Big Data and to present the opportunities and limitations of using such data in social research. The paper informs about three basic types of Big Data as they are distinguished in contemporary methodological literature, namely administrative data, transaction data and social network data, and exemplifies how they can be utilized by quantitative social research. According to many, questionnaire-based sample survey as the dominant method of quantitative social research has found itself in a crisis, especially as response rates have decreased in most developed countries and public confidence in opinion polling has declined.

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

The goal of this article is to contribute to the study of the history of Czech sociology by examining the journal Acta Universitatis Carolinae Philosophica et Historica – Studia Sociologica (AUC StS), published by the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University. After almost 50 years of its existence, this less-known periodical can be viewed as documentary evidence on the developments and transformations in a part of Czech (or Czechoslovak) sociology. We account for the journal’s main characteristics and discuss its position and role in Czech sociology. In addition to standard procedures of content analysis, we employ the innovative method of citation network analysis. Accordingly, one of the paper’s important goals is to assess the adequacy of the methods applied for addressing research questions of this kind.

The general aim of the article is to assess the ways residents of Czechia engage in particular types of action in public interest (including attending a public hearing on a local issue, volunteering, donating or signing a petition) and in such actiongenerally. A literature review concludes that the terms engagement and participation tend to be seen as synonymous. In the theory section, predictors of engagement are discussed, amongst which most authors treat education as central. This gives rise to my first hypothesis (H1): Individuals’ civic engagement will be positively influenced by their educational attainment. In contrast, since have been no detailed studies of the relationship between life satisfaction and engagement in Czechia thus far, I formulate H2: There is a relationship between individuals’ life satisfaction and their civic engagement, with more engaged citizens being more satisfied.

The article strives to contribute to the debate on the concept of corporate social responsibility by focusing on the under-researched area of the effects of firms’ grants on local and regional development from the perspective of local governments and inhabitants. This concept is typically studied from the corporate perspective. While normally ignored, the spatial dimension plays a substantial role in firms’ grant allocation decisions. The article tries to fill the gap by studying the case of spatial distribution of financial grants of the ČEZ Corporation to communities in the vicinity of the Dukovany nuclear plant, which is located at the peripheral border of the regions of Vysočina and South Moravia. The considerable amounts of money sent to local budgets are intended to compensate communities near the nuclear plant for the risks related to its existence.

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

Book Review: Ivan Chorvát, Roman Džambazovič (eds.). 2015. Rodina na Slovensku v teórii a vo výskume. Bratislava: Stimul, 181 s.

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

The paper presents to Czech social scientists an introductory review of the concept of equivalence and the method of blockmodeling in social network analysis (SNA). After introducing the central concepts of SNA such as node and tie, along with their basic metrics such as centrality and cohesion, I present the concepts of role and position. These are treated by SNA as clusters of nodes with similar ties, something I juxtapose to algorithms to identify cohesive subgroups of nodes. Subsequently, I define and compare the two most frequently applied types of equivalence – structural, which is strict but broadly applicable, and regular, which is more liberal but has limited uses.