It is increasingly common for scientists to
engage the general public in dialogue and involve people in research rather
than communicating with them in a haughty or condescending manner. We are
witnessing the hybridization of research institutes: researchers are more
actively collaborating with the media, civil society, and the customers for
research, HSE Associate Professor Roman Abramov and Senior Lecturer at the
Department for the Analysis of Social Institutions Andrei Kozhanov noted in an
article.
September 09, 2015
Encouraging entrepreneurship, providing social support services and
helping people find jobs are all part of a new ‘social contract’ programme
introduced across Russia to assist poor families in becoming financially
self-sufficient. Using formal contracts to encourage low-income people to
engage in economic activity is proving to be more effective than welfare
handouts, according to researchers of the HSE Centre for Studies of Income and
Living Standards.
September 08, 2015
Over the past two decades, the average life expectancy in Russia has increased by 2.3 years for women and 1.4 years for men, according to a recently published paper based on the WHO's Global Burden of Disease (GBD) assessment – a major epidemiological study by a group of international experts, including Vasily Vlassov, Professor of the HSE Department of Health Care Administration and Economy.
September 03, 2015
Parents of school students in Moscow tend to believe that test assignments in two major final exams—the Basic State Exam (BSE) and the Unified State Exam (USE)—are too complex and teachers fail to properly prepare students for the finals; this negative attitude, which appears to be a widely-held stereotype not necessarily supported by evidence, is formed long before the exams come round. However, according to a study by Alina Pishnyak and Natalia Khalina, once the exams are over, families no longer consider them so hard to pass.
August 28, 2015
The opportunity to find an interesting and well-paid job, a comfortable socio-cultural environment, and friendly and professional contacts in the new location are all essential factors for graduates of universities from Russian regions who are planning to move to another city. Saida Ziganurova, Research Assistant at the HSE Center for Institutional Studies, studied the migration potential among young professionals.
August 25, 2015
Many young employees of museums, art centres and galleries, libraries and
publishing houses move up the career ladder fairly fast, yet workplace success
comes at a cost, forcing them to work beyond normal hours and outside formal
job descriptions. Nevertheless, employees of cultural institutions are prepared
to make the extra effort to help their organisations survive, according to
Margarita Kuleva, lecturer at the Department of Sociology, HSE campus in St.
Petersburg.
August 21, 2015
By choosing education for their children, parents tend to perpetuate
social inequalities. While educated middle-class parents invest in their
children's future by selecting the best possible school and becoming actively
involved in the educational process, working-class families often feel they
cannot afford to choose and instead, send children to the nearest school,
expecting them to make it on their own, according to Larisa Shpakovskaya,
Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, HSE Campus in St.
Petersburg.
August 18, 2015
Overall, Russians tend to be satisfied with their country's health care
system, particularly when they do not need to deal with it; however, those with
recent first-hand experience of healthcare often complain about the lack of
professionalism and the decline in free medical services, according to Sergey
Shishkin, Head of HSE's Department of Health Care Administration and Economy,
and Natalia Kochkina and Marina Krasilnikova, sociologists with the Levada
Centre, in their paper Health Care
Service Availability and Quality as Assessed by the Russian Public.
August 12, 2015
Decisions relating to student dropout often resemble a trial with students as defendants and teachers as prosecutors and judges. This approach can create barriers between students and staff and raise the issue of the university's mission, according to Ivan Gruzdev, Evgeny Terentiev and Elena Gorbunova of the HSE’s Internal Monitoring Center.
July 31, 2015
Higher education cuts the risk of poverty by more than half, according to Alina Pishnyak and Daria Popova, leading researchers at the HSE Centre for Studies of Income and Living Standards. Their findings reveal that the household incomes of families where all adults are university-educated stand at 20% above the average, and conversely, in families where none of the adults hold a degree, living standards tend to be below average by a quarter.
July 29, 2015
Age
boundaries are diminishing fast and do not influence people’s lives as much as
before. Nevertheless, age remains an important factor in social interaction.
Age self-identification for women is closely related to their appearances,
which is why beauty remains one of the main self-investment projects for women.
These are the conclusions drawn by researchers from the HSE Centre for Youth
Studies (CYS) in St. Petersburg as part of a project* entitled ‘Age under
Construction: Age Construction by Girls and Young Women’.
July 24, 2015
Free legal services are generally available in Russia, but their quality
varies widely. Court-appointed lawyers tend to be less knowledgeable and
competent than those who offer their services pro bono for reasons such as
social responsibility or professional reputation, according to a study by Anton
Kazun, Junior Research Fellow at the HSE International Center for the Study of
Institutions and Development.
July 20, 2015