Лаборатория сравнительных социальных исследований

This paper analyzes the relationship between support of democracy and attitudes to human rights, in particular, support for gender equality, in the countries covered by the first wave of the Arab Barometer project. We use cluster analysis and negative binomial regression modelling to show that, unlike in most countries of the world, correlation between support of democracy and gender equality is very low in the Arab countries. There is a group of people in the region who support both democracy and gender equality, but they are a small group (about 17% of the population) of elderly and middle-aged people characterized by higher education and social status. A substantial number of poorly educated males express support for democracy but not for gender equality. Many people, especially young males aged 25–35 in 2007, are against both gender equality and democracy. Younger people tend to be both better educated and more conservative, those belonging to the 25–34 age group are the most patriarchal in their gender attitudes. Controlling for age, education still has a positive effect on gender equality attitudes. Nevertheless, this phenomenon probably means that there are two simultaneous processes going on in the Middle East. On the one hand, people are getting more educated, urbanized etc., which means the continuation of modernization. On the other hand, we observe a certain retrogression of social values. 

Previous studies have not found effective ways of encouraging participants to use smartphones to complete web surveys. We hypothesize that conditional differential incentives (the amount depending on the device the respondent uses to complete the web survey) can increase overall participation rates and the proportion of respondents who use a particular device in web surveys. We conducted an experiment using a volunteer online access panel in Russia with 5,474 invitations sent to regular mobile Internet users. We varied the invitation mode (SMS vs. e-mail) and encouragement to use a particular device for completing the survey – mobile phone or personal computer (PC). SMS increased the proportion of mobile web respondents, while e-mail increased the proportion of PC web respondents. As expected, differential incentives increased the overall participation rates by 8-10 percentage points if higher incentives were offered for completing the survey on a mobile phone. Contrary to expectations, offering higher incentives to PC web respondents did not produce higher participation rates compared to the control condition. Both encouraging the use of a mobile phone and offering higher incentives were effective at increasing the proportion of respondents using mobile devices. In terms of both participation rates and the proportion of respondents using mobile devices, offering incentives 50% higher was as efficient as offering incentives 100% higher for mobile web respondents. Offering higher incentives to mobile web respondents also had an effect on sample composition. Significantly higher participation rates were found among females and those with higher education.

There is some evidence that a scrolling design may reduce breakoffs in mobile web surveys compared to a paging design, but there is little empirical evidence to guide the choice of the optimal number of items per page. We investigate the effect of the number of items presented on a page on data quality in two types of questionnaires – with or without user-controlled skips. Three versions of a 30-item instrument were compared, with 5, 15 or all 30 questions presented on a page, in two different surveys, one with skips and one without. We found that displaying 30 items on a page reduced the breakoff rate by almost a third compared to presenting 5 items per page in the questionnaire without skips, however, the difference was not statistically significant. In both surveys with and without skips the completion times were significantly lower in the 30-item per page condition; however, item nonresponse rates were also higher. We give some practical recommendations to guide choices while designing questionnaires for mobile web surveys.

While there is a growing literature on state formation and the rise of state capacity over time, this literature typically deals with differences between countries, neglecting the fact that state formation also occurs differentially within a country over time. This article examines legacies of state formation spatially, by looking at variation within “frontier” states—countries that in recent centuries have extended rule over new territories adjacent to their core regions. Frontier zones are found to have ongoing lower levels of public order and deficient public goods provision. Several theories are examined to explain this discrepancy, including internal resettlement, costs of monitoring and enforcement, and the relationship between settlers and the indigenous population. It is argued that the formation of strong social institutions among settlers leads to resistance to attempts to impose governance over frontier regions, and to “select for” lower fiscal capacity and lower provision of public goods.

Structural equation modelers judge multi-item constructs against three requirements: (a) multiple items converge in a single dimension; (b) individual-level patterns of item convergence are invariant across countries; (c) aggregate-level patterns of item convergence replicate those at the individual level. This approach involves two premises: Measurement validity hinges solely on a construct’s internal convergence, and convergence patterns at the individual level have priority over those at the aggregate level. We question both premises (a) because convergence patterns at the aggregate-level exist in their own right and (b) because only a construct’s external linkages reveal its reality outreach. In support of these claims, we use the example of “emancipative values” to show that constructs can entirely lack convergence at the individual level and nevertheless exhibit powerful and important linkages at the aggregate level. Consequently, we advocate a paradigm shift from internal convergencetoward external linkage as the prime criterion of validity.

In this paper we regard the impact of parental family on individual attitudes reflecting sexual liberalization such as homosexuality, abortion and divorce. Earlier in the traditional society all of these types of behavior were strongly disapproved.Now with the process of value change, increasing general tolerance and diversification of behavior more and more people consider these types of behavior as normal.