Results Of Poll Research Articles

Surprise, surprise: the New Zealand general election of 2017

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the 2017 general election in New Zealand and draws out some of its implications. The final outcome was a surprise, and its implications momentous. Events strengthened Labour under a new leader and weakened the Green and New Zealand First parties, making it possible for Labour to become a viable coalition formateur. Comparing campaign public polling results, at least some of the polls were ‘wrong’, but all added to the excitement and uncertainty. Coupled with a new Labour Party leader, that uncertainty and excitement had mobilising effects that affected the young, but not the old. Finally, this article analyses the changes to the party system, nation-wide, and in the Māori electorates, assessing the degree of two-party dominance, and draws out implications for debates about the threshold for representation.

Acoustical balance between the stage and the pit in the Teatro Colón of Buenos Aires

The acoustical balance between the singers and the orchestra in the well-known Teatro Colon of Buenos Aires, as an opera theatre, is evaluated from several perspectives. Among the many particular features that contribute to the ideal balance of Teatro Colon, there are three which seem to stand out: the shape of the horseshoe, the height and depth of the boxes at the upper levels, and the design of the proscenium and pit. In this sense, the reflections on the stage floor become significant for the higher levels. Some of the architectural causes of this acoustical behavior have been found out from the results of opinion polls on the perceived sound by the audience, physical measurements and the outcomes of a digital model. This paper analyzes the balance between the singers, placed in various locations on the stage, and the orchestra in the pit. As it will be seen, the architectural characteristics of the theatre allows the musicians to maintain the balance in almost ideal values and to preserve the spectral equilibrium through the entire hall.

Labor Supply Elasticity in the Unconditional Basic Income System: Data Sources and Methodological Issues

This study deals with five sources of data that may help to answer the question of how labor supply would respond to the introduction of unconditional basic income. Research of lottery winners’ labor supply and the results of field experiments, in which the behavior of households who have received a regular unconditional income for a limited time period was observed and is then investigated and discussed. Results of the laboratory experiment, the estimates of microsimulation models, and the results of the opinion polls are also examined. The surveyed data sources show mainly a slight decline in labor supply. However, none of these data were collected in situations that would fully correspond with the expected conditions of decision-making that would occur with the basic income. Any results derived from them therefore need to be considered with caution.

Testování žáků na konci základní školy a státní maturita – aktuální otázky současné vzdělávací politiky

National assessment system in the Czech Republic has been widely discussed since 1990s, particularly, the national students’ assessment at the end of lower-secondary education, and new model of upper-secondary leaving examination (maturita). Neither testing in the 9th grade nor the new model of maturita, have been launched up to now. They attracted high media attention and became a political battleground. Results of the public opinion poll are presented in this study. National assessment is perceived the same way by general public and by parents. The population is divided into two halves (for and against) in the case of favouring whole-population testing at the end of lower-secondary education, and more than two-thirds of the general public is in favour of new model of maturita.

Policy uncertainty and international financial markets: the case of Brexit

ABSTRACTThis study assesses the impact of the Brexit probability on both the UK and on international financial markets, for the first and the second statistical moments. As financial markets are by nature highly interlinked, one might expect that the uncertainty engendered by Brexit also has an impact on financial markets in several other countries. We first estimate the time-varying interactions between UK policy uncertainty, which to a large extent is attributed to uncertainty about Brexit and UK financial market volatilities. Second, we use two other measures of the perceived probability of Brexit before the referendum, namely daily data released by Betfair and results of polls published by Bloomberg. Based on these data sets, and using both panel and single-country SUR estimation methods, we analyse the Brexit effect on levels of stock returns, sovereign CDS, 10-year interest rates in 19 predominantly European countries, and those of the British pound and the euro. We show that Brexit-induced policy uncertainty will continue to cause instability in key financial markets and has the potential to damage the real economy in both the UK and other European countries. The main losers outside the UK are the ‘GIIPS’ economies: Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain.

GROWING ATTRACTIVENESS OF RUSSIAN UNIVERSITIES FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

This article belongs to research type as it presents outcomes of the research conducted by the authors and includes analysis of the data gathered during polls and interpretation of university management problems unveiled during the research. The article looks into the efficacy of attracting foreign students to the Russian universities. The problem is a practical one as it solves the tasks which is relevant to universities at present. During the research authors studied foreign students’ opinion about level and quality of higher education in Russia. The main outcome of the research is the development of recommendations for university executives and local authorities concerning increase of the number of foreign students at the Russian universities. Practical part of the research included questionnaires for the foreign students from the following universities: HSE, HSE in Nizhny Novgorod, Moscow State Regional University, RANEPA, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod, Linguistics University of Nizhny Novgorod as well as Samara State Economic University. The poll covered 124 students. The main result of the research is the list of recommendations on increasing foreign students’ number at Russian universities based on the experience of Russian and foreign universities as well as poll results. Analysis results demonstrated the following measures to be the most relevant: increasing the number of subjects taught in English; creation of joint project uniting Russian and foreign students to solve the problem of communication and interaction; increasing English language skills of teaching and academic staff; adding newest research publications in different topic areas in English to electronic base of Russian university libraries; providing introductory trips around Russia; providing comfortable separate rooms in the dormitory for foreign students: presence of information in English in the city; opening research centers and laboratories in different areas of science. As a suggestion for further research in this topic we can mention broadening the number of respondents which will allow for identifying additional aspects of teaching at Russian universities which require improvement for upgrading university reputation and increasing its attractiveness for foreign students. The article contains authors’ research and recommendations based not only on existing foreign and Russian experience but also on primary data received from participants of the teaching process - foreign students. It must be mentioned that research does not include opinion of CIS students as most of them get benefits when coming to study in Russia. Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation is also interested in solving the problem of attracting foreign students into Russian universities therefore university executives are eager to improve university status at the international level and attract foreign students.

Green infrastructure as a determinant of the quality of urban life and a barrier to the development of a city: A case study

The quality of life and the residential environment in an urban space are considerably influenced by Green Infrastructure. This results from the growing ecological awareness of society and the greater importance attached to the quality of the surrounding environment. Such an approach influences the city’s image and its perception with respect to the quality of life. Olsztyn is an example of a city with exceptionally rich natural environmental assets, located in the cleanest region of Poland. The city is developing in line with the “Olsztyn: the Garden City” slogan. The objective of the article is to compare the results of a public opinion poll among city dwellers with respect to the quality of life in terms of natural environment resources.

Patriotism as a value in the globalizing world: national and international ‘measurements’

The article considers patriotism as one of the most difficult social concepts to be ‘measured’ for it has different interpretations and ‘dimensions’ that are discursive rather than determined by objective factors. First, the author outlines the results of the Russian opinion polls in the 2010s, 2000s and 1990s, which indicate changes in the interpretations of patriotism by the shares of the population willing to identify themselves as patriots. The figures stabilized in the mid2000s, which was also determined by the state’s efforts to use the idea of patriotism to support the legitimacy of state bodies and national solidarity under the intensifying globalization. Since 2001, the state implements programs of patriotic education that aim to revive patriotism as an idea of individual spiritual heritage and the basis of social and political stability in the country. The author considers the patriotic mood of the Russian students based on the results of surveys conducted in 2011 and 2016 on the sample of Moscow students. The data present both national and international ‘dimensions’ of patriotism. The former is constituted by estimates of one’s country position in the world, its key problems and contradictions, objects of pride, level of social trust, etc. The international dimension of the patriotic mood is constituted primarily by geopolitical awareness, i.e. the images of neighboring countries.

ЗДОРОВЬЕ НАСЕЛЕНИЯ СТАРШИХ ВОЗРАСТОВ: СОВРЕМЕННЫЕ ВЫЗОВЫ

The article presents the analysis concerning the significant parts of senior citizens’ health, as well as the factors influencing its state and dynamics. The author shows the results of opinion polls and clinical interviews with senior citizens conducted by the specialists from the FSBIS “Vologda Research Center of RAS” in the Vologda Oblast in 2015, 2017 and 2018.  The paper reveals the value and self-assessment of health, presents the peculiarities of aged population’s self-preservation practices, the availability and satisfaction with health services. The author states the main contemporary challenges connected with the necessity for health maintenance and promotion of aged population under the conditions of increasing share of this socio-demographic group within population structure.

Behavioural Factors in the Hungarian Retail Government Bond Market

It has long been known that the decision-making of money market participants deviates from the pattern outlined by textbook models. This study attempts to explore the real processes taking the approach of behavioural finance, and analyses the hypothetical investment decisions of Hungarian retail government bond investors based on the literature of behavioural finance theses. The analysis relies on the results of a representative opinion poll using behavioural finance theory on the government bond market as a basis. The survey covers the political, emotional and literacy factors underlying the decisions. It examines the herding effect, the influence of demographic factors, and as a new approach, it outlines the profile of Hungarian retail investors. One other novel result of the survey is that it confirms a number of commonly known assumptions about the behaviour of retail investors through collecting data, while reviewing and synthesising behavioural finance literature specifically relevant to the government bond market.

Civil and Political Participation in the Conditions of Forming a Request for Change (on the Example Protest Actions Against Raising the Retirement Age)

The article analyzes the reasons why public discontent with pension reform did not grow into a mass political protest. Based on the results of public opinion polls, the author shows that dissatisfaction with the increase in the retirement age was truly widespread and had a significant impact on the social well-being of Russians, as well as their level of confidence in the main government and public-political institutions. However, irritation and disappointment of the population with the activities of the authorities did not escalate into mass political protest and were situational in nature. The main reasons for this are, first, the decline in the proportion of paternalistically oriented population, for whom state pension is relevant, and second, the lack of experience of social, civic and political participation among population groups interested in maintaining the old retirement benefit plan, and, third, the lack of interest of the active part of Russian society, first of all, of the urban middle class, in mainstreaming protest actions. Transformation of public discontent into mass political action, in the opinion of the author of the article, is possible only if an actor appears who is able to rise above the interests of certain social groups, and act as spokesman for the interests of society as a whole.

Reducing Complexity of Multiagent Systems with Symmetry Breaking: An Application to Opinion Dynamics with Polls

In this paper we investigate the possibility of reducing the complexity of a system composed of a large number of interacting agents, whose dynamics feature a symmetry breaking. We consider first order stochastic differential equations describing the behavior of the system at the particle (i.e., Lagrangian) level and we get its continuous (i.e., Eulerian) counterpart via a kinetic description. However, the resulting continuous model alone fails to describe adequately the evolution of the system, due to the loss of granularity which prevents it from reproducing the symmetry breaking of the particle system. By suitably coupling the two models we are able to reduce considerably the necessary number of particles while still keeping the symmetry breaking and some of its large-scale statistical properties. We describe such a multiscale technique in the context of opinion dynamics, where the symmetry breaking is induced by the results of some opinion polls reported by the media.

Social security and crime in contemporary society: problems, instruments, trends in the context of Ukraine

The authors follow structural functionalism and neofunctionalism as dominant methodology for interpretation of social security as a social institution (mechanism) controlling homeostasis and sustainability of the social system (society). Social security in the contemporary society is a very complex, ambiguous matter. It is a synthetic, integrative unlike many other types of security, since it accumulates, on the one hand, partial processes, relevant data and at the same time allows to focus on the main directions of search. Because of the plural problems (challenges, threats, dangers, etc.) the paper leaves for analysis only those that threaten stability and sustainable development of society (in Ukraine and in developed European states) as such. Crime is one of such problems. The authors stressed the importance of trust in the public and social institutions fighting crime, presenting and analyzing relevant data. The analysis of problems related to counteraction to crime is provided by authors in the context of reforms in Ukrainian society, is compared with EU neighboring states’ realities, based on statistical data as well as on the results of public opinion polls.

НОВЫЕ РЕЛИГИОЗНЫЕ ДВИЖЕНИЯ ЭПОХИ ПОСТМОДЕРНА: ДИНАМИКА ОРГАНИЗАЦИЙ НЬЮ ЭЙДЖ (НА ПРИМЕРЕ ОРГАНИЗАЦИИ "РАДАСТЕЯ")

The article examines the phenomenon of New Age as a part of new religious movements through the prism of reflecting in it certain characteristics of the postmodern era and the features of the philosophy of postmodernism, showing two trends in the development of modern groups of new age. The author allocates two main tendencies in development of New Age: strict “lean” towards “classical” new religious movements and, on the contrary, withdrawal from “religious perspective”, loss of separate “religious lines” inherent at a stage of formation and initial existence of the organization with gradual evolution to not religious (secular) form of such organization. In detail, the example of the “Radasteya” organization examines one of these trends - the evolution from New Age to a non-religious type of organization. On the basis of results of sociological poll, the author made a conclusion about lack of signs of religious component in the activity of the Institute of rhythmology, the successor of “Radasteya”; people visiting the Institute are not aimed at satisfaction of religious requirements, do not consider Institute the religious organization, do not perceive it as a sacred place...

Imitational features of the 2018 presidential elections and their impact on the next electoral cycle: results of public opinion polls

The article provides assessment of the 2018 Russian presidential elections with the distinctive features of electoral authoritarianism. Drawn on the findings of VCIOM opinion polls the paper concludes that the nature of the elections at the state level is primarily imitational: compliance with electoral procedures does not lead to the redistribution of political power but merely consolidates the existing political system. However, despite the imitational characteristics, elections reflect changes in public opinion ignored by the authorities out of necessity. In this article, the authors describe a forecast scenario for the next electoral cycle.

SVM prediction of the attestation success on the base of the poll results

The problem of the data analysis in the educational sphere in the context of prediction of the passing's success of the final state attestation by the graduates of the secondary school has been considered. Such data can be imbalanced substantially. To solve this problem it is offered to use the SVM classifiers on the base of the modified PSO algorithm, which allows choosing the kernel function type, the values of the kernel function parameters and the value of the regularization parameter simultaneously. In advance, the different rebalancing strategies, based on the basic SMOTE algorithm, can be applied for rebalance the classes in the experimental datasets. The prediction results with the use of the SVM classifiers on the base of the modified PSO algorithm and the different rebalancing strategies have been presented and compared with the prediction results received on the base of the most known software packages, such as Statistica StatSoft and IBM SPSS Modeler.

Air quality and odour evaluation on terrains characterized by a complicated odour emission profiles

The complexity of describing the very phenomenon of odour nuisance is probably the cause of lack of regulations concerning this topic in the Polish law system as well as standardized odour law in EU. However, in European countries there are solutions regarding this matter. Moreover, methods enabling the evaluation of odour air quality are available. The problem of an authoritative assessment of odour nuisance appears especially when few emission sources characterized by changing conditions and emission profiles and, very often, a complex spatial/topographical structures, also showing locally variable meteorological conditions are located in „vulnerable” places (with many „odour complaints” being recorded there). In conditions similar to the aforementioned the odour situation analysis requires simultaneous usage of several studying methods. In this work are presented: field measurement results and sociological poll results, all carried out for area with several domineering odour emission sources. The research conducted made possible showing the concentration of various odour types and their sources for the researched area, which later on enabled to undertake action aiming at reducing odour nuisance.

Контроль развития кадрового потенциала российских организаций: образование и трудоустройство молодых специалистов

In the article current problems of development of personnel capacity of the domestic organizations are considered. On the basis of the conducted empirical research (the analysis of scientifi c literature, results of polls of experts and anchor poll of young specialists) development of practical recommendations and off ers on realization of development of personnel potential in social practice of the organizations is presented in article. The basis of practical recommendations had included off ers on employment of young specialists in the profession; on stimulation of students, the educational organizations of the higher education, employers on rational development of personnel potential.

Professional and Social Problems of Young Researchers and Lecturers Based on the Opinion Poll Results (the case study of NTUU Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute)

Professional and Social Problems of Young Researchers and Lecturers Based on the Opinion Poll Results (the case study of NTUU Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute)

Russian Lectures at the Crossroads of Reforms: Strategies of Survival and Adaptation

The article is dedicated to topical questions of Russian education modernisation from the point of view of the conflict of scientific interests and educational staff of higher school, namely the analysis of adaptation strategies of lecturers in the conditions of modernisation of higher education. Main transformation trends of Russian higher school have been singled out and their influence on the position of lecturers has been revealed. Basing on the results of opinion poll, dynamics of conditions, content and character of teachers’ activity has been revealed. We have also identified important behaviour strategies of teachers on the professional labour market in the conditions of significant intensification of competition and real risk of losing their jobs. Significance of academic degrees in the system of strategic guidelines of the faculty community has been studied. Most high-demand technologies of self-marketing have been identified, and their use allows increasing competitive advantage of teachers and strengthens their positions in the professional field in the modern period.