The article explores the evolution of life satisfaction from 2015 to 2023 with a special focus on the period of the COVID pandemic. Data from the Czech Household Panel Survey show that the Czech population experienced a gradual increase in life satisfaction (LS) in the years before the pandemic. The onset of the pandemic in 2020 erased the gains in life satisfaction from previous years with no significant gender or age differences. However, the focus on the mean changes in life satisfaction conceals the great heterogeneity of responses. In the first year of the pandemic, about one-third of respondents did not experience any changes, and one-quarter of respondents enjoyed an improvement in their LS compared to pre-pandemic levels. However, stability was rare and we observed high levels of volatility in response to the pandemic. Overall, descriptive statistics and mixture growth models revealed small differences across sociodemographic groups. Only education seemed to systematically predict the trajectories, as individuals with less than tertiary education experienced a more severe decline in the pandemic years.
Higher education institutions (HEIs) play a significant role in helping society adapt to an ever-changing world, including through sustainability and civic education. From the perspective of resource dependence theory, examining stakeholder attitudes is a key aspect of research on sustainability, civic education, and HEIs. In this context, the general public remains an understudied group. This article aims to describe public attitudes towards HEIs in sustainability and civic education and to explore their relationship with sustainability-related emotions. The study is based on a quantitative questionnaire survey (N = 1,460) and employs descriptive statistics, ANOVA, and two-step cluster analysis. The results suggest four perspectives on the role of HEIs among participants: Changers, Supporters, Opponents, and Indifferents. HEIs appear to have a stronger mandate to shape public attitudes towards sustainability than they do to shape attitudes towards the broader functioning of society. Furthermore, attitudes are associated with emotions at both the group and individual levels: Changers report the highest level of sustainability-related emotions, whereas Opponents report the lowest.
The study examines how mothers interpret fathers' involvement in their children's education during the Covid-19 pandemic. The aim is to understand the semantics of paternal participation from the perspective of mothers and how these interpretations shaped the daily organisation, regime, and fulfilment of school requirements in households. The research sample consisted of 29 mothers and 1 father, with whom semi-structured interviews were conducted. The data were analysed using reflective thematic analysis, which understands the subjectivity of researchers as a legitimate analytical source. The analysis revealed the semantic frameworks mothers use to describe and explain fathers' participation in pandemic education in the family environment. The results point to a significant gender-structured imbalance in coping with the burden associated with pandemic education. During this period, mothers found themselves in the role of silent organisers of daily school demands, while fathers were perceived as marginal or completely absent actors in education. Mothers normalised the absence of fathers without explicitly questioning gender expectations, regardless of the impact on their mental well-being or working life. The study also raises questions about the representation of fathers in research on parental support for children's education.
Civic and environmental education are often institutionally separated, although many contemporary public challenges-including climate adaptation, land use, mobility, energy transitions, and local environmental conflicts-require both democratic deliberation and socio-environmental action. This article develops an integrative conceptual review of student participation as a shared mechanism that may connect these domains. Rather than treating participation as a universally beneficial educational practice, we conceptualise it as an institutional opportunity structure whose effects depend on its quality, consequentiality, equity, and legitimacy. We propose a mechanism whereby consequential participation in classroom, school, and community settings supports agency-related beliefs, particularly psychological empowerment, perceived control, action self-efficacy, civic and political efficacy, and collective efficacy. These beliefs may, in turn, increase the likelihood of both civic engagement and environmental action. We further argue that environmental engagement also depends on an affective pathway, particularly nature connectedness and place attachment, which complements-but cannot substitute for-agency-building forms of participation. Because the empirical evidence reviewed here is concentrated primarily in Czechia, the article treats the Czech case as an analytically useful Central European case rather than as representative of the region as a whole. We identify segmentation, tokenism, inequality, low institutional trust, and disputes concerning legitimacy as key boundary conditions. The article's contribution lies in specifying how participation may bridge civic and environmental education, the conditions under which it may fail, and the implications of these dynamics for future sociological and educational research on youth agency in Central Europe.
This article presents a synthesis of empirical quantitative findings on the individual-level factors that influence the susceptibility to believe scientific and technological disinformation and the willingness to disseminate it. The review identifies determinants divided into three main categories: socioeconomic status (SES), attitudinal and value orientations, and psychological factors. Key findings indicate that the influence of formal education and economic capital is often moderated, or even overshadowed, by ideological orientation and deeper personality and psychological traits. The intentional dissemination of disinformation is strongly associated with two factors in particular that are part of psychology's Dark Triad theory: narcissism and Machiavellianism. Conversely, cognitive reflection (CRT) emerges as the strongest protective factor. Consequently, effective defence strategies must move away from simplistic fact-checking and focus on developing psychological resilience, metacognition, and critical thinking in recipients. Future research should shift from predominantly focusing on respondents via additive regression modelling towards investigating interaction and moderation effects and thematically towards examining the role of political and business elites as drivers of disinformation narratives.
