LCSR Summer School Day 9
Today Peter Schmidt presented his own research project devoted to the study of value diversity in Europe. Read more about his lecture and other events of the ninth day of the School in the essay of Olga Basmanova
The 9th day of the summer school was quite intensive for all participants, but everyone is still motivated to study more and broaden their scientific horizons. Today a theoretical session by Professor Schmidt was devoted to clarification of some issues with interactive effects in SEM and he also explained how SEM can be applied in social and psychological research. During the practical session by Zsofia Ignacz participants experienced how to specify more complicated models in MPLUS.
Participants from St. Petersburg and Moscow presented their reports after lunch. There were some changes in the program, and Andrey Shcherbak, Yegor Lazarev and Evgeniy Varshaver gave their reports.
It should be noted that it was a day of new projects. Andrey presented his study conducted in cooperation with Svetlana Borinskaya. Their research project aims to explore the interdependence of non-social factors and social changes. In particular, they are looking at genetic diversity as a factor of social change. The main question addressed in this paper is whether and how genetic diversity affects the societal level. Yegor presented his project on attitudes towards refugees in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. He used data from Caucasus Barometer and also he based his proposal on his own ethnographic observations. Finally, Evgeniy Varshaver presented his new comparative project on self-control and educational achievements.
After the second coffee break all participants had a pleasure to listen one more lecture by Peter Schmidt. But that time he presented his own study (co-authored with Vladimir Magun and Maxim Rudnev) about value diversity in Europe using latent class approach.
What is a main research question of Schmidt’s paper? Leading scholars of our Laboratory Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel had provided a rationale for bypassing the within-country diversity in cross-country comparisons of values. They argued that cross-national differences dwarf the differences within given societies. However that conclusion appeared not to be applicable to the basic values of the Europeans measured with the Schwartz value dimensions of Conservation – Openness to change and Self-Enhancement – Self-Transcendence. And now results of empirical analysis by Schmidt et al. show that the populations of the European countries (including former Communist countries) are more similar in their values and that value overlap is much greater than could be expected from Inglehart’s and Welzel’s point of view. To classify value differences among Europeans Schmidt with co-authors developed a six-element typology of value profiles.
The day was completed with an open-air dinner in a barbecue house near the Helios Hotel and the collective walk alongside the coast of the Gulf of Finland. It was the great end of such a long day!
by Olga Basmanova