LCSR Summer School Day 6
Begin to learn again! Marina Nikitina tells about the first day of the second week of the School.
The first day of the second week of the LCSR’s Summer School started with the traditional theoretical session by professor Peter Schmidt. He told about the approach of MTMM (the Multi Trait Multi Method), in which the observed variable is decomposed into a substantive factor (a trait) and the factor method (a method factor). Also such topics as equivalent models, types of indicators and types of model testing were touched upon in this session.During the practical session the participants continued to interpret different parameters and quality metrics of their first SEM model done by means of statistical soft M-plus.
After the lunch, Tatiana Karabchuk, Deputy Director of LCSR, whose research is already at the final stage (an article for publication in an international peer-reviewed journal will be prepared soon), was the first who presented her report. She considered the relationship between life satisfaction among women, on the one hand, and their status on the labor market and the number of children, on the other hand. As a result, the author's hypothesis on institutional background difference of the countries were confirmed by the multilevel regression models. The main dependent variable was an index of subjective well-being on the individual level and on the level of country the main independent tested variables were the index of EPL (Employment Protection Legislation), the rate of female unemployment and the duration of maternity leave benefits paid.
Natalia Soboleva, research assistant of the LCSR, made a presentation of progress in her project on cross-cultural comparison of gender attitudes on the labor market. A lot of work has been done on the methodological issues, in particular, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted to identify most appropriate items for dependent variable.
The current study of Svitlana Khutka from Kyiv-Mohyla Academy is devoted to comparison of subjective well-being and the human agency in the transition and non-transition countries.
New project of Julia Sereda from the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine deals with the problem of the influence of Christianity on the work ethic in Europe. First results of her analysis show that in Protestant countries (to a lesser extent - in the Catholic) the power of faith stimulates the high importance of work, but there is no such correlation in the Orthodox countries.
Each of the speakers got her share of questions, comments and applause. Working day was over by consultation of professor Eduard Ponarin on multilevel analysis in R.
by Marina Nikitina