Co-playing, or playing video games together, is a social practice that enriches relationships and game experience by providing the players with informational and social support. This study explores how co-playing integrates into friendship in two small (6–7 people), male communities of adolescent and adult friends. Both communities are local and school-based; both focus on co-playing Dota 2. The study focuses on the leadership in these small networks, compares their co-playing patterns, and the ways in which co-playing affects the relationships in both communities, enhancing their bonding social capital. We apply network analysis and personal interviews to compare and contrast how the co-playing communities emerged, are maintained and evolve along with the friendship. The main conclusion is that such co-playing communities emerge around a single Dota 2 enthusiast in the early secondary school as a common pastime, but co-playing video games increases bonding social capital among the community members. Network analysis demonstrates the differences in leadership in the teen and adult communities. The research shows how video games are embedded in collective everyday friendship and how co-playing communities function in support of such a relationship. The findings could be further tested against female and mixed co-playing communities.

This paper focuses on the relationship between film content and human values in Europe. Our research fills in two research gaps. For one thing, it reveals the links between people’s values and visual cultural production that can showcase the effects of changing values on culture. The other part of our research concerns the use of the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) as a data set reflecting changes in modern societies. We track the changes in film topics provided by the IMDb and European Values Study (EVS) data to see how the changes in people’s values are linked to the popularity of related topics. Our special focus lies on the link between choice values and the probability of nudity depiction in films. The sample contained all European countries across 1960-2013. Using multilevel regression analysis, we found that the probability of female nudity is associated with the level of choice values, whereas the male nudity is more likely to appear in films related to the topic of homosexuality.

How are candidates without official party affiliation able to succeed in authoritarian elections? We analyzed 1,101 independents who took part in city council elections in Russia’s regional capitals between 2014 and 2018. We found that independent candidates’ electoral fortunes depended both on their personal resources enabling them to attract voters’ support and pre-electoral deals with the regime. We also discovered that the chances of being elected were higher for those formally independent candidates who were the regime’s hidden representatives. For the latter group, the chances to win the race were boosted mostly by pre-electoral deals, rather than their personal resources.

This article describes the normative system that attempts to regulate online behaviour in the sphere of premarital romantic relationships of the second-generation migrants whose parents came to Russia from societies of the South Caucasus which regulate female behaviour more strictly. Based on a mixed-method study, which included a survey, a series of semi-structured interviews and digital ethnography, we describe the norms as well as the means by which they are enforced. We show that this normative system is rooted in the cultural concept of namus, which regulates the behaviour of females, while the control function is imposed mainly on their male relatives. We argue however, that these norms are widely circumvented and e-namus (manifestation of namus on the web) can barely prevent second-generation migrant females from having online romance. This brings about a radical change in gender relations altogether. The article contributes to the literature related to offline-online normative transfer, online dating, second-generation migrants’ romantic relationships and intergenerational value change.

Contributing to literature on composition of social ties of migrants, this article argues that “co-ethnic” ties, often included into analysis as a homogeneous entity, are either the ones obtained in the sending society, thus connecting a migrant to his relatives and neighbors from the community of origin, or the ones acquired in the receiving society and connecting people from different parts of the sending country. Basing on results of a survey of Kyrgyz migrants in Moscow, the authors show that this distinction is associated with difference in patterns, such as economic advancement, attitude toward ethnic category of belonging, and remitting behavior, which together comprise specific modes of integration for migrants. The explanations of these differences are suggested. Also, the mechanism of change of prevalent type of co-ethnic ties in migrants’ ego-networks from “homeland-rooted” to acquired in the receiving society is described.

This article offers a gentle introduction to the measurement invariance (MI) literature with a focus on its relevance to  comparative political research. It reviews 1) the conceptual foundations of MI; 2) standard procedures of testing for MI in practical applications within the multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) paradigm; and 3) two novel
approaches to MI, Bayesian approximate measurement invariance, and MGCFA alignment optimization, which are especially suitable for dealing with extremely heterogeneous data from large-scale comparative surveys typical for modern political science. It then provides an empirical illustration of the key concepts and methods from the MGCFA-MI literature by applying them to testing for MI of two recently introduced measures of democracy attitudes, so-called liberal and authoritarian notions of democracy, across 60 countries in the sixth round of the World Values Survey. These analyses show that both measures can be considered reliable comparative measures of democratic attitudes, although for different reasons. Finally, this study emphasizes that some survey-based constructs, e.g.,  authoritarian notions of democracy, do not follow the reflective (correlation-based) logic of construct development. These alternative measures, known as formative measures, do not assume strong correlations between their
indicators, for which reason it is inappropriate to test their comparability using the reflective MGCFA approach.  Instead, their comparability can be tied to their correlations with theoretically relevant external variables.

This paper investigates the paradox of research productivity of higher-education institutions in the Arab Gulf Countries. Exploring the case of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) the article fills the gap in the literature on the Gulf higher education research efficiency. Despite the considerable investment into higher education, UAE universities showed rather slow growth in research output. This puzzle was tackled to present possible policy outcomes relevant for research productivity in higher education institutions located in the emerging economies. The study highlights the research productivity indicators dynamics for GCC countries and brings detailed analysis on the research output and input for the UAE universities. We argue that to succeed in academic efficiency the county needs to increase its research investments and diversify research-boosting policies and practices. The policies should focus on work-attractive long-term conditions for the faculty/researchers, home-based doctoral education system and home-trained human resources.

Work forms one of the important spheres of life and is one of the main determinants of subjective well-being in general and life satisfaction in particular (Argyle 2001; Sousa-Poza & Sousa-Poza 2000). The study aims to disclose the impact of work values and socio-demographic characteristics upon the link between life satisfaction and job satisfaction. The European Values Study 2008-2009 is used as dataset. The sample is limited to those who have jobs (28 653 cases). The results confirm findings from the literature that intrinsic motivation increases life satisfaction (Vansteenkiste 2007). It is in line with self-determination theory according to which pursuit of intrinsic motivation facilitates satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Kasser, 2002). Sharing extrinsic values decreases life satisfaction.  The association between life satisfaction and job satisfaction is stronger for higher educated individuals and self-employed and weaker for women, married individuals, religious individuals and those of younger age. These results are due to the different of job in life of people with different characteristics. The link between life satisfaction and job satisfaction is the same in countries with low and high GDP per capita.

Moral self-evaluation can be an important predictor of social behavior, personal attitudes and quality of life. It also allows exploring the construction, maintenance, and protection mechanisms of the moral self-scheme as a special type of social identity. Within this study, in a two-stage experiment, the authors develop and test several tools for measuring moral self-evaluation: idiographic and conventional versions of the Moral Constructs Scale based on the repertory grid technique. Both versions were found to be significantly related to Moral Self-Approval Subscale, as well as to theoretically relevant constructs (general self-esteem, life satisfaction, moral emotions of guilt and shame), which serves as evidence in favor of their validity. However, the relationship patterns indicate that there may be different types or components of moral self-evaluation. The authors note the multicomponent nature of both versions of the Moral Constructs Scale, reflecting their greater sensitivity in comparison to other scales measuring moral identity and self-esteem. Some possible directions for future research using the proposed tools are discussed in conclusions.