Happy New Year and Merry Christmas! 

Dear colleagues, we hope this letter finds you well. The passing year has been very successful for our Center. Our university has entered the top-100 of the Social Policy and Administration university ranking alongside HSE University and Lomonosov Moscow State University. Furthermore, we have been working on 12 projects financed by Russian research funds and 9 projects financed by our own funds. Lastly, 60 articles indexed in Web of Science and SCOPUS have been published by researchers from our School. 

We assume this year has been as good for you as it has been for us. In the light of the upcoming holiday we wish you personal happiness and professional productivity in these trying times. We are looking forward to keep working and exchanging ideas with you during the next year. Stay healthy and good luck in your studies! 

Yours sincerely,
the team of the Center 

News & Events

Research results: hybrid education format

An all-Russian survey of students' parents has been carried out by Anna Bagirova, Daniil Sandler and Alexey Kluev. More than 1500 people coming from 77 regions of Russia have been questioned. According to parents, online-learning can take up more than 30% of the curriculum without any damage done to the process. On the positive side, it helps students develop problem-solving skills and teaches them to look for information by themselves. On the negative side, it spoils their health, induces procrastination and causes dependence on the Internet. The research has been conducted by the order of the Russian ministry of science and higher education.

Sociologists took part in international conferences

Maria Pevnaya and Daria Telepaeva took part in the X Anniversary conference “The influence of the crisis on the development of the non-commercial sector and societal self-organization: new roles and perspectives”. The conference took place at HSE Moscow and both researchers presented their work supported by a grant from the Russian fund of basic research (RFBR). Pevnaya’s presentation concerned the changes in international volunteering and civil participation of students. Telepaeva discussed the resource opportunities of sports volunteers of the Ural region. Moreover, Telepaeva presented her work concerning youth’s participation in social and cultural development of the cities of Russia and post-Soviet countries at the VIII Russian-Armenian forum dedicated to youth and educational cooperation opportunities.

VI All-Russian Sociological Congress: Sociology of elderly

Quite a few topics related to education for the elderly have been discussed by Ural sociologists during the Congress. To begin with, Polina Abramova introduced the notion of education for the people of the third age and characterized their recourse potential. Nina Shabrova continued by discussing the sociological research of elderly people’s educational requirements throughout their whole life. 

Later in the day Elena Shakulina presented the results of an empirical research which showed that elderly professors tend to play an important role in the stable development of the university and their adaptive potential is substantial. The last presentation by Tatyana Rezer was dedicated to a special subject: she discussed the problem of the transmission of knowledge and experience from elderly people to youth. Her conclusion was that in an industrial society the present turned out to be an ideological paradigm therefore this transmission has been gradually losing its social and cultural value.

Concentration on demography

Our researchers have attended the III All-Russian demographic forum with international participation. This annual event is conducted by the Institute of demographic research supported by the Russian ministry of education and science and Russian academy of sciences. The main goal is to figure out the strategies for national demographic and family-support policy in Russia. During the plenary session Anna Bagirova has presented her research related to the evaluation of forebears’ impact in the eyes of parents. Her research was based on the results received from the realization of a related project supported by the Russian fund of basic research (RFBR).

Independent quality control of social support services for elderly: problems and perspectives

The results of the monitoring project “The changes in the independent evaluation of social support services for elderly in a transforming social state” have been presented at the meeting of the Social Council of the Ministry of social policy in the Sverdlovsk region. According to the research, the following are the main issues connected with the evaluation method:

1. Inclarity in the subject definition.
2. Minimal level of post-evaluation feedback both with providers and with recipients of social services.
3. Criteria can be clearer.
4. The validity of the results provided by the operators causes doubt.

The recommendation to add a unified questionnaire for the recipients of social services has been carried out. It has also been suggested that the consumer’s selection should decrease by 40 % while the research methods would become more flexible. For instance, deep interviews can be taken along with the monitoring of social network user pages. The social policy minister of the Sverdlovsk region Zlokazov A.V. found all these ideas to be valid and valuable.

Recent publications by CSPS researchers

• Bagirova A., Kuznetsova E., Blednova N. State Support for Families with Children during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Russia: Institutional Grammar Tool Analysis // Public Policy and Administration. 2021. Vol. 20. No. 3. Pp. 431-442. URL: https://vpa.ktu.lt/index.php/PPA/article/view/29198 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5755/j01.ppaa.20.3.29198

Contact information

The Newsletter is published 4 times a year by the Center for Social Policy Studies, the School of Public Administration and Entrepreneurship, Graduate School of Economics and Management, Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B.N.Yeltsin. The mission of the Center is to create advanced scientific and applied research in the field of social policy and facilitate international scientific cooperation.

Please if you have any questions contact

Anna Bagirova
Doctor of Economics, PhD of Sociological Sciences; Professor of the Department of Sociology and Technologies of Public and Municipal Administration;
Deputy Director for Science and Innovation of the School of Public Administration and Entrepreneurship
Head of the Master's Program “Research and Analytics in Public and Municipal Administration”

a.p.bagirova@urfu.ru

+7(922)222-24-43