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LCSR Summer School. Day 4

Alexey Domanov highlights the day

The fourth day of LCSR Summer School was devoted to hands-on practical classes in MPlus. Participants applied the theory they had learned the day before to some real data, listened to presentations of their colleagues, trained to use LaTeX and had unforgettable time in the evening.

During the first class the participants proceeded to tasks on confirmatory factor analysis. On this day practical work was demanding not only for the brains, but also for the computer processors. As number of parameters increased, computers required more and more time for calculation and in the end students had no choice but to leave their laptops working during the coffee-break. Professor Duelmer also showed that Mplus was able to analyze even more complicated models.

Nevertheless, challenging tasks were really uniting and very positive for the team spirit. This friendly atmosphere let participants know more about each other’s projects and exchange experience in applying new methods to real data. Coffee-break was a good time for a professional talk about methodological novelties and potential publications.

After the lunch Anna Almakaeva (LSCR, Moscow) presented her new project “Trust, Caution and Human Empowerment”. It dealt with the distinction between trustworthiness and caution, as well as between “real” and “cautious” trustees. She also advanced an alternative method for measuring generalized trust.

Gosia Mikołajczak (Faculty of Psychology & Centre for Research on Prejudice, University of Warsaw) focused on ambivalent sexism theory in relation to religiosity and values in her report “Religiosity and Values in Support for Gender Status Quo”. Having noticed positive prejudices towards women, she differentiated between hostile and benevolent sexism. In this new project she is going to test the link between intrinsic religiosity and hostile sexism via self-transcendence, as well as between religious practice and benevolent sexism via conservatism.

Anna Shirokanova (Belarus State University) presented a new interdisciplinary project “Religion as the Best manager: The Effect of Religious Ethic on Work Ethic” concerning effects of Islam on work ethic in comparison to protestant work ethic. She enumerated traits of Islamic work ethics and showed the first results and preliminary conclusion from analysis of World Values Survey data.

At a productive LCSR staff meeting employees of the Laboratory exchanged their ideas on further development of the Laboratory this and next year. Also Alexander Kustov continued his course LATEX for Social Scientists. Besides, as usual, Kirill Zhirkov did not spare his free time to clear up the questions of some inquiring summer school students at a special additional lesson. In the evening, participants had an opportunity to go to a Russian-style sauna (banya) and to walk along the Gulf of Finland.

By Aleksey Domanov