The article presents the results of an empirical study aimed at exploring the relationship between providing students with the opportunity to choose academic disciplines and their engagement in the learning process. In recent decades, the flexibility of educational programs and offering students the choice of courses has become essential for shaping non-linear career trajectories and soft skills that meet the demands of the modern labor market. However research shows that in Russian higher education institutions there is a belief among faculty and administration that, when given the choice, students tend to select courses in order to reduce their workload and minimize effort to complete them. This belief hinders the increased flexibility of educational programs at universities. Based on data from a large-scale sociological survey of Russian students (N = 14 988), we examine the relationships between students’ opportunities to choose courses and four types of engagement (class engagement, extra effort, collaborative learning, and disengagement). It was found that the opportunity to choose courses related to the area of study or within a narrow specialization is statistically significantly and positively correlated with class engagement, and may also contribute to students’ extra efforts and engagement in collaborative learning practices. In contrast, the opportunity to choose courses unrelated to the field of study was significantly associated only with engagement in collaborative learning practices but showed no statistically significant effect on class engagement or extra effort. Attending elective courses was positively related to class engagement, collaborative learning and extra effort, as well as to disengagement. The findings are useful for researchers in higher education, university leaders, faculty and academic support staff involved in organizing the learning process and developing curricula in universities.
In the author’s previous research, a multitude of religious organizations were identified operating in the Republic of Belarus and becoming the object of public attention. Their comparison showed that only a minority of religious organizations are mentioned and discussed in public discourse, and the natural state of the life cycle of most religious organizations is to remain outside the public eye. This article is devoted to the study of the phenomena of visibility and noticeability of religious organizations. Visibility is considered to be the ability of a religious organization to stand out against the background of the confessional space. Noticeability is regarded as the ability of the population and social institutions to distinguish the religious organizations against the background of the confessional structure of society. The influence of visibility and noticeability on the activities of religious organizations, on the prospects for their growth and development, on the structure of the confessional milieu, and on the formation of public ideas and illusions on the topic of religion are analyzed. Particular attention is paid to the development of an algorithm for calculating the noticeability index of religious diversity — an integral indicator reflecting the level of society’s sensitivity to the diversity of religious organizations in any given country and period of time. The data previously obtained as part of the study of social identification of religious organizations are used to develop and test formulas for calculating four sub-indices reflecting different components of the noticeability of religious organizations: a) sensitivity to their number; b) frequency of their mentions; c) sustainability of attention to them; d) sensitivity to different segments of the confessional structure. The index of noticeability of religious diversity is an important indicator that should be taken into account when analyzing and describing the religious landscape.
Interest towards such issues as social responsibility and environmental sustainability has been growing annually in both global and domestic information spaces, which determines the relevance of the present study. This article presents research findings on the integration of social and environmental themes in Russian mass media discourse. Based on a corpus containing 300 publications from leading online media outlets covering the years 2020–2025, a network analysis of semantic relations between thematic clusters was conducted. The study identified the development of a stable bipolar structure of media discourse comprised of social and environmental clusters, interconnected through bridging concepts: ESG (environment, social responsibility, and corporate governance), volunteering, and sustainable development. Analysis of network metrics revealed the predominance of the inclusion theme and the high intermediary role of the ESG agenda. Content analysis identified four primary discursive frames: “responsible development”, “participation and partnership”, “moral obligation”, and “economic feasibility”, each containing its own argumentative structure. Comparative analysis of strategies employed by ten leading Russian online media outlets reflected variations in approaches to thematic integration — ranging from maximum (21–29% of cross-thematic materials) to minimum (6%). The research findings indicate the formation of an integrated semantic field in the domestic media space, wherein social justice and environmental sustainability emerge as complementary components of the national development strategy. The conclusions presented in this article can be utilized for enhancing communication strategies in the sphere of corporate social responsibility and domestic information policy, which may contribute to the formation of a more profound, sustainable and long-term oriented public discourse.
The article reports on a quantitative online study exploring how play motives shape gamers’ behavioral strategies. The empirical foundation is an open online survey of 2,561 subscribers of a major Russian gaming YouTube channel (92% male; median age 24). Factor analysis extracted four motivational factors — Teamwork, Escapism, Creativity and Competition — while cluster analysis identified four player types: Escapists, Competitors, Creators and Casuals. To visualize strategies, an adapted Bartle-Radoff model was employed, with the axes “orientation toward others – avoidance” and “quantitative – qualitative reward”. Most respondents prefer single-player strategies focused on measurable results; nevertheless, Competitors frequently adopt an escapist strategy. Multiple regression (R? = 0.24) shows that a stronger Competition factor increases social orientation, whereas Escapism and Creativity reinforce a tendency toward solitary play. Among socially motivated gamers, escapism is latently linked to a desire for quantitative recognition. Overall, social motivation can manifest itself in both single-player and multiplayer games; ingame mechanics and personal goals, rather than genre, play the decisive role.
Novel measures in Russian family and demographic policy include support for women who have given birth while pursuing vocational education. This is driven by the government’s concerns about the postponement of motherhood, and by a desire to reduce the risks of economic vulnerability for this group of women with children. In this paper we examine the social factors underlying the onset of motherhood at the ages of highest educational activity. We also explore whether childbirth disrupts a woman’s subsequent educational trajectory, considering vocational education and childbirth as significant events within the framework of one’s life path. The empirical basis for the study is data coming from ten waves of the HSE cohort survey “Trajectories in Education and Career” (2011–2021). The analysis includes women born in 1995–1996 who participated in all waves (N = 992). Their educational and reproductive trajectories were constructed for the period up to age 26. The results of the event sequence and regression analyses revealed that the differentiation between the life trajectories including and not including childbirth before the age of 26 has a more pronounced social gradient than the differentiation within the group of those who gave birth before the age of 26. The study elicits selection to the group of young women becoming mothers sooner compared to the population average, and this selection is driven by such factors as place of residence, the human capital of the parental family, educational orientations, and life plans declared before the age of vocational education. Additionally the birth of a child during vocational education generally does not disrupt the educational trajectory of a young woman and does not lead to incomplete education.
In the last decade, the development of museum inclusion in Russia has been so rapid that it has made it possible for people with disabilities to participate as visitors and employees and has led to the formation of inclusive museum communities. This article examines the institutional foundations of inclusive activities in museums aimed at working with the category of people with disabilities. Based on 40 in-depth semi-formal interviews with museum staff responsible for the development of inclusion and accessibility, as well as with museum workers with disabilities, it is shown that the emergence of inclusion in the Russian museum scene has launched institutional processes that changed the museum as an organization. Thematic analysis identifies three organizational models of inclusion that currently exist in Russia and that indicate varying degrees of institutional isomorphism: museums with full-fledged inclusivity departments (1), museums with individual employees responsible for inclusion (2), and museums without “inclusive” rates (3). Such stable museum practices have been established to ensure the successful implementation of inclusion as the stratification of the roles of inclusion specialists, the creation of cross-functional working groups that include experts with disabilities, and the rejection of stigmatizing labels in work and any wording that’s put forward. It is revealed that the institutionalization of inclusion in museums is a complex process that requires overcoming multi-level institutional barriers that hinder the process of introducing and legitimizing new social rules and roles in the organizational structure of the museum. In conclusion, a systematic approach is presented in the search for consensus to overcome them at the micro-level of individual actions of employees (special attention is paid to the agency of museum staff and their “precarious care”), the meso-level of the museum as an organization and the macro-level of legislation and public policy.
Why do some folks believe in conspiracy theories while others don’t? The purpose of this study was to examine a number of individual predictors of believing in conspiracy theory. The article presents estimates of the impact of trust in social networks, religiosity and institutional trust on faith in conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic. Data from the 2nd wave (April–May 2021) of the online survey (N = 1199) of the Values in Crisis international longitudinal project were used as an empirical foundation. The results of regression analysis showed a positive effect of trust in social media on belief in conspiracy theories about the spread of COVID-19. Much attention has been paid to the study of the religious factor. It is shown that the importance of religion in a person’s life has a positive effect on their belief in conspiracy theories. The article argues that the influence of the frequency of religious service attendance is a statistically insignificant determinant. The author notes the negative impact of political trust on the level of conspiracy mindedness. It was revealed that older respondents believe more strongly in the deliberate spread of the cononavirus. It is likely that people with higher education are less prone to believing conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic. The significance of the research results is in the fact that they can help in the development of educational programs aimed at developing critical thinking and information source analysis skills among the population. Understanding the mechanisms that contribute to the spread of conspiracy theories helps to develop strategies to counteract disinformation and manipulation.
The article attempts to reconstruct the research program of Gennady Semyonovich Batygin (1951–2003) — philosopher, sociologist, historian of the social sciences, and the first Dean of the Faculty of Sociology at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSSES/Shaninka). The analysis is structured as a sequential description of four thematic blocks: 1) the history of Russian/Soviet sociology, 2) the language and writing of sociological science, 3) the methodology of sociological research, and 4) the debate over “qualitative” sociology and “rigorous” methodology. The article’s central argument is as follows: while Batygin may formally be placed within the cohort of “Soviet sociologists”, it must equally be admitted that he worked largely outside the logic and norms of Soviet sociology. In other words, his research program, though emerging within the institutional context of Soviet science, transformed its methodological, textological and epistemological foundations in three ways. First, the instrumental ethos of sociology gave way to a normative model of academic “vocation” in the Weberian sense. Second, Batygin developed criteria for academic writing that were independent of political circumstances. Third, his concept of interpretive schemes substantially revised the foundations of Soviet sociological empiricism: Batygin argued that social reality in research is a constructed artifact rather than a direct reflection of the objective world. Drawing on Batygin’s scholarly and pedagogical activities at MSSES, the article demonstrates that the Moscow School from the mid-1990’s onward became a site of professionalization and academization of the sociological craft in Russia — a space in which Soviet social science was not simply rejected, but critically reexamined.
The aim of this study was to analyze basic gender role attitudes and the dynamics of support for the principle of gender equality among Russian men and women in order to clarify the current specifics and prospects for establishing a modern gender order. The analysis is based on data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS–HSE). The study revealed that over the past twenty years, there has been a rather modest increase in support for the principle of gender equality among both women and men. Despite a significant increase in the level of education of Russian citizens, a gradual erosion of traditional ideas on the roles of women and men, as well as a certain softening of gender stereotypes, currently only one in five men and slightly more than a third of women demonstrate the deepest commitment to the idea of gender equality. Russians’ attitudes toward various aspects of the principle of gender equality remain contradictory, largely reflecting the peculiarities of societal perceptions of specific gender issues. One of the reasons for this contradiction is the prevalence of difficult-to-reconcile gender ideologies in society. Women are more active than men in supporting gender equality in various spheres of life, but this prevalence is not overwhelming. Age, locality type and education level barely differentiate respondents of both sexes in their level of support for the principle of gender equality. However, older women with higher education and those living in the largest cities demonstrate more active support. The concept that views youth as virtually the only social category capable of potentially changing the existing gender order appears as oversimplified in the context of the results of the analysis. The analysis demonstrates the need for more persistent promotion of gender equality in the implementation of the “National Action Strategy for Women for 2023–2030” to ensure not just declarative but actual equality of rights and opportunities for men and women in all spheres of life.
After many years of studying the history of modern Soviet/Russian sociology and contributing to the development of public opinion survey methodology in the USA, in recent years B. Doctorov’s scientific work has mostly been focused his research on new areas — autobiographical and autoethnographic analysis. In an interview he gave to L. Kozlova he reveals the reasons for, the nature and the process of him exploring the Proza.ru website, while reviewing the content of the materials he himself submitted to this website. These include about half a thousand memoirs and documentary stories that encompass B. Doctorov’s life in Russia and the US, as well as his unique professional career. He describes his approach and the results obtained using the term “nonlinear autobiography”.
The concept of the “scientific elite” as a heuristic principle and a framework for sociological analysis carries the implicit assumption of the inherent superiority of a small number of “outstanding scientists”. This paper introduces the space of science as a multidimensional distribution of agents of knowledge production across relative positions. The space of science is conceptualized as a space of positions and differences, where scientific competition unfolds through symbolic and political struggles for resources and recognition. The fundamental condition for these differences is the uneven distribution of capital, while the stake and goal of the struggle remain its permanent redistribution. The space of science admits various demarcations (e. g., researchers vs administrators, revolutionaries vs conservatives) and oppositions, depending on which resources gain or lose priority. It is an open structure organized around contradictions and hierarchies, chief among which is the opposition between the scientific elite and ordinary scientists. Within this geometric framework the scientific elite is treated not as a group of individuals, but as a positional entity. Consequently, the focus of analysis shifts from the individual scholar to the objective relationships between positions, determined by the distribution of specific resource types. In this approach the scientific elite is understood not as a statistically defined group of “great men”, but as a dominant position that ensures optimal access to resources and the power to define the standards and norms of scientific practice.
This article presents an overview of the work of the scientific session “The Social Space of Labor and of Labor Management: Education, Employment, and Human Capital” held at the 10th St Petersburg International Labor Forum (April 8–10, 2026). The session was organized by the Department of Social Management and Planning at St Petersburg State University. Three thematic scientific papers were presented as part of the session. The first paper analyzed the sociological concepts of neuromanagement in relation to the application of its tools to improve labor productivity. The second paper presented the results of a pilot sociological study of the social characteristics of integrating AI into management processes in organizations. The third paper was based on a secondary analysis of materials from a pilot sociological study of informal permanent unpaid overtime employment, focusing on how employees develop strategies to respond to employers’ imposition of overtime work. The article summarizes the scientific discussion on the presented thematic papers and other issues related to the development of labor relations.
This paper addresses problematic issues associated with the introduction of the Hirsch index as the key instrument for evaluating scientific activity, and it is based on the analysis of Russian researchers’ publications included in the National Bibliographic Database (Russian Science Citation Index, RSCI) and materials from two repeated sociological surveys (2022 and 2024). With their titles, abstracts and keywords including the term “Hirsch index”, 625 publications in RSCI between 2011 and 2024 were reviewed; this made it possible to conclude that their distribution corresponds to the attributes of the innovation lifecycle model. 30 selected publications were further analyzed, which led to the conclusion that there is a misalignment between the completed institutionalization of the Hirsch index and most researchers having a negative attitude towards it. The analysis of sociological data from two repeated sociological surveys sought to define the place and role of the Hirsch index in scientists’ daily professional activities: their attitude towards its implementation, assessment of its advantages and disadvantages, its role in achieving their professional success. The main focus was on testing the hypothesis about the determining role of the researcher’s status, rather than their publication activity, in achieving high numerical values of the Hirsch index. For this purpose cross-tabulation and regression analysis methods were used, and factors that are predominant in differentiating the numerical values of the Hirsch index and its predictors were identified. Based on the obtained results, we arrived at the conclusion that the Hirsch index is a derivative of the researcher’s social status, primarily of their Doctor of Science degree — another manifestation of the established academic tradition, a kind of equivalent of the Matthew effect in science.
The need for analyzing interrupted interviews is driven by two reasons: (1) the importance of monitoring possible systematic biases in samples, and (2) the fact that such interviews most clearly reveal problems inherent to the survey process in general, problems that are usually overcome through the joint efforts of interviewers and respondents. The focus on “hard refusals” is justified by the fact that this status is assigned when a respondent most categorically expresses unwillingness to continue, meaning that communicative problems are assumed to be the most acute in these cases. The study was conducted in two stages: (1) a telephone survey (CATI) conducted by “Chronicles” from the 5th to the 13th of February 2025 using a random stratified sample (N = 1600 successful interviews, 746 interrupted interviews, of which 160 received the “hard refusal” status); (2) content analysis and qualitative analysis of audio recordings of all of the interrupted interviews (N = 160) that ended with a categorical refusal to continue the dialogue (final status “hard refusal”) on any question after the introduction. In all analyzed interviews respondents initially agreed to participate (consent obtained during the introduction), but lost this willingness during the interview for various reasons. Most often hard refusals arise at the beginning of the questionnaire, especially on socio-demographic questions, which a significant portion of respondents perceive negatively as a request for their personal data. Contrary to expectations, questions about military action do not lead in the number of refusals. The categorical unwillingness to continue interviews in telephone surveys on political topics is a product of three groups of difficulties that arise during the survey communication or preceding it. In order of prevalence, these are: (1) unwillingness or reluctance to discuss political issues (43%), (2) distrust towards the researchers (29%), and (3) methodological features of the questionnaire and the interview process (length of the questionnaire, question wording, interviewer behavior) — together accounting for 14%. In 44% of all cases hard refusals were preceded by communication issues between the interviewer and respondent on previous questions in the questionnaire.
This article presents the results of a qualitative study of the impact of long-term international mobility on the professional development of researchers in the social sciences and humanities. Given a global intensification of competition for human capital, the mobility of scientists has become an integral feature of the modern academic landscape. However, unlike STEM disciplines, the specifics of social sciences and humanities, including language barriers, contextual rootedness and locality of academic markets, create additional challenges for their adaptation and professional development after mobility. The analysis is based on the theory of the researcher’s three careers (cognitive, organizational and community careers) by J. Glaser and G. Laudel. Using this approach helped us to learn that relocation affects these career dimensions unevenly: organizational career turns out to be closely related to the national and local context, community career depends on the branching of social and professional ties and the level of international recognition, while cognitive career is determined by the universality of competencies. The empirical database consists of 21 in-depth interviews with Russian researchers of social sciences and humanities who have left Russia and have been living abroad for more than one year. Three key strategies of adaptation and effects on professional development after relocating were identified: reassembling the network of contacts; reconfiguration of professional identity (going into applied research or retraining); transitioning to less qualified positions. The analysis shows that long-term mobility can both stimulate professional growth and lead to deprofessionalization, stagnation of cognitive career and loss of social capital. The results highlight the need to develop targeted support measures for mobile researchers in the social sciences and humanities, taking into account their career stage and disciplinary specifics.
This article discusses the methodological possibilities and specific features of constructing chain indices based on longitudinal sociological data. The relevance of the study stems from the shortage of diverse socio-economic indicators for promptly tracking fluctuations in the expectations and intentions of small business owners under heightened uncertainty. The authors show that the chain index methodology is a relatively simple and convenient tool for measuring a series of categorical variables that serve as indicators. In order to obtain robust estimates, the article applies the balance method for calculating index values, followed by aggregation through averaging of partial indices, using data from the FOM Small Business Longitudinal Study, which has been conducted quarterly since 2021. On the accumulated longitudinal data, the paper substantiates an index-based methodology for measuring changes in the assessments and expectations of small business owners — the Small Business Pulse (SBP). The article provides examples of calculating the SBP as an aggregated cumulative index based on four thematic indices (entrepreneurial intentions, perception of the macroeconomic environment, assessment of structural changes, and selfassessment of the state of the business). The stability of the time series is verified using the ARIMA methodology. The results made it possible to identify the functional and analytical advantages of the four thematic indices within the SBP, as well as its analytical potential.
This article presents a conceptual model of a friendly educational environment. The rationale for whether it is a necessity is based on two types of arguments. Firstly, based on the results of analyzing the transformation of the idea of inclusive education in its representation in the Russian public space, the limitations of targeted educational policy are demonstrated. Secondly, based on a brief review of academic publications, the internal inconsistency of a number of established approaches towards researching the phenomenon of friendly schools is explicated. The article demonstrates the potential to overcome the limitations of both universal and targeted approaches in the field of educational policy. Targeted universalism, embodied in the idea of a friendly educational environment, allows broad common goals shared by all participants of the educational process to be implemented in strategies that take into account the interests and needs of individuals and groups. The proposed model of a friendly educational environment is based on two dimensions, where the structural, substantive and relational aspects of the educational environment are considered at three levels: culture, policy and practices. Based on a series of expert interviews, a possible filling of the formed conceptual matrix with examples drawn from the experience of Russian schools is proposed. The presented model can serve as the basis for developing tools designed to solve research problems of both fundamental and applied orientation, including the use by schools for the purposes of self-study and adjustment of organizational policy directions. Some of the aspects embedded in the matrix relate to issues which in order to be resolved require educational organizations to build sustainable intra- and intersectoral partnerships. In this case the proposed matrix can be used to identify the points of development of a friendly culture and the dissemination of inclusive social practices through the development of local communities.
