LCSR Summer School. Day 5
Sofia Lopatina reviews Friday presentations and lectures
The first week of 2013 LCSR Summer School came to the end. Sofia Lopatina (a research assistant at LCSR) reviews Friday presentations and lectures.
The 5th day of the ongoing 3rd LCSR Summer School started with the final lecture on multi-level SEM since the second week of the Summer School would be dedicated to practical workshops.
Dr. Hermann Dülmer started his lecture with the explanation of goodness of fit model measures. He also gave several examples of various fit indices. After that he moved on to the main topic of the lecture “Using multi level SEM to explain Measurement Invariance”. Participants learned that there are 3 levels of measurement invariance. Professor Dülmer provided audience with various techniques of gaining appropriate results when measurement invariance is absent.
After lunch Christopher Swader (HSE, Moscow) delivered the preliminary results on his ongoing project on urban loneliness in Russia. He investigates whether loneliness is more prevalent in the cities then in rural areas. Blaze attitude, urban values, and objective social isolation were chosen as possible determinants. He obtained the following results: values play a significant role in urban areas (Moscow and Tambov in his sample) but social isolation is the main predictor of loneliness in rural area. Christopher considered individualism as a buffer for isolation but he disapproved this hypothesis: objective features of social integration can enhance loneliness (e.g. people who have children feel more lonely).
Ekaterina Lytkina (HSE, Moscow) continued the session with the final report of her project on “Anomie: between normlessness and cognitive disorientation”. She measured anomie by using structural equation modeling. Obtained factors consisted of several variables such as normlessness and powerlessness, job satisfaction, social isolation, meaninglessness. The sample included the data of the 6th wave of the World Values Survey from Russia and Kazakhstan.
Session closed with the research proposal by Oleksii Shestakovskyi (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv). Oleksii tries to understand what factors could explain prejudice towards immigrants.
The working day was followed by Malina Voicu`s (EUROLAB, GESIS) guest lecture on “Civic participation and gender beliefs: an analysis of 41 countries”. Civic participation was divided into two groups: civil organizations and protest action. Malina hypothesized that civic participation may lead to egalitarian attitudes towards gender roles. She found that various associations effect attitudes towards gender equality in different ways. Moreover, the factors which shape attitudes among men and women vary a lot; moreover, political actions especially signing petitions and taking part in demonstrations are also important factors.
At 18.30 additional course on “Latex for social scientists” by Alexander Kustov (Princeton University, USA) started. The last class was of participant`s interest since Alexander taught people how to make presentations in Latex using “Beamer” package.
By Sofia Lopatina