General attitudes towards the welfare state: the concept and features of measurement

Abstract

The article is devoted to the results of the development of a sociological test “GSR-5”, designed to measure general attitudes towards the welfare state. A theoretical analysis of the measurement of attitudes towards the welfare state in modern Western societies has been carried out. It is concluded that the entire set of relevant studies can be divided into two categories - a priori (transition from the concept to existing measurements) and a posteriori (focusing on the existing experience of empirical research). At the same time, insufficient attention was revealed to general attitudes towards the state (as a background or stereotypical attitude). The sociological test is proposed based on five indicators in relation to the state: assessment of effectiveness, assessment of the future, assessment of living conditions, assessment of historical achievements and assessment of current events. For the purpose of further empirical validation, the sociological test was included in four large-scale cross-sectional studies using different methods (CAWI, F2F, self-completion, CATI). Based on the obtained results, the factor, criterion and construct validity of the test was checked. The ideal types approach was used to categorize respondents’ attitudes based on their individual responses. As a result, 5 social groups were identified in terms of their attitude to their own state: expressively negative, moderately negative, intermediate, moderately positive and expressively positive. In general, based on the analysis, a conclusion was made about the possibility of using the sociological test “GSR-5” in sociological research.