Journal Our Society Archive

The electronic version of the first number of the fifth edition of the review Czech Society (Naše společnost). Czech Society issues Center for Public Opinion Research, Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

The article compares the level of dependence of four justice ideologies on the structural position of an individual and his/her personal traits. First, the theoretical concept of distributive justice is introduced within the framework of Grid- Group Theory. Second, Czech public opinion of justice is analysed with data from the ISJP 2006 survey. Egalitarianism is the most structurally embedded ideology that is infl uenced by all socio-demographic attributes. Nevertheless, psychological factors…

Family may be defi ned as a relatively durable group of persons which is based on blood relations, is caused by marriage eventually by adoption and its main functions are reproduction, upbringing, but also carry over cultural models. Meaning of marriage institution is very often discussed topic not only in context of this defi nition. These discussions are provoked not only by opinions and questions in terms of marriage as an outworn institution, but also by the results of demographic statist…

The article stands as a second part of a series about the question answering process during standardized surveys and elaborates the memory retrieval phase. At the beginning the main psychological conceptions of memory are introduced (structure, traits, information types), which are then used for the analysis of the function of memory during survey answering process. The second part deals with the issue of factual information retrieval: the topic of initial encoding of the information into the…

The article is based on the importance of the political culture in czech public opinion. Following the data obtained at Public Opinion Research Centre´s polls the author analyse how critical are czech citizens when talking about political culture of most of politically active people. The fi rst part of the article is devoted to the explanation of the concept of political culture and its use in sociological and politological theory.

The agenda setting function of mass media became one of the most pervasive concept examining long term eff ects of mass media on society. Meanwhile most of the media scholars works have focused on the relationships of media agenda and public agenda in the last thirty years, there is lack of empirical works dealing with aspects of agenda building process so far, above all aspects concerning mutual infl uences of various media contents. Presented paper examine intermedia agenda setting of Czech…

The text with some additions introduces to Czech audience a work of Scott L. Althaus and Devon M. Largio, who back in 2004 were analyzing origins and consequences of shift in America’s public enemy no. 1 from Osama bin Laden to Iraqi president Saddam Hussein that occurred during period after 9/11 terrorist attacks on WTC and Pentagon and before U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. By charting the changing levels of public attention given to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in American news cove…

The electronic version of the second number of the fifth edition of the review Czech Society (Naše společnost). Czech Society issues Center for Public Opinion Research, Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

The electronic version of the first number of the sixth edition of the review Czech Society (Naše společnost). Czech Society issues Center for Public Opinion Research, Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

A little personal recollection of Pavel Machonin.

Profile of scientist Pavel Machonin.

Using the concept of subjective social distance we focus on perceptions of occupational categories. First, the theoretical concept of social distance is introduced as a tool for measuring social stratification. Second, subjective hypothetical interactional distances to 22 occupational stimuli are analyzed with data from the Social Distances 2007 survey. People rate the stimuli hierarchically analogous to occupational prestige and socioeconomic status; however some minor divergence can be dete…

This article uses empirical data to evaluate Czech perceptions of lexical borrowing, based on a nationwide poll conducted in November 2005 by the Public Opinion Research Centre of the Institute of Sociology of the Academy ofSciences of the Czech Republic. The survey combines synchronic and diachronic perspectives, and is the first major studyof its kind since Tejnor, October 1970. It broadly concludes that most Czechs accept functionally necessary loanwords, but feel that their language conta…

The article stands as the third part of a series about the question answering process during standardized surveys and elaborates the judgment making phase. The first part deals with attitude questions. In this regard, relevant theories of the nature of attitude are explained (true attitude model, construal model, the belief-sampling model); context effects that influence decision-making processes in the course of answering are described (i.

Researches of election preferences are probably the most monitored products of agencies for public opinion research. The information, which returns via media back to the public, not only describes social reality, but sometimes also co-creates this reality. Results of the researches as such can affect public attitudes. For this reason, among others, we should understand what information the...

The electronic version of the second number of the sixth edition of the review Czech Society (Naše společnost). Czech Society issues Center for Public Opinion Research, Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

The article concern on the prison system. In the first part are described attitudes of public opinion towards crime and prison system. Not only in the terms of causes of criminal behavior. It also brings an evaluation of particular conditions and facilities which are available or which would be hypothetically available for prisoners in contemporary Czech prison system. The second part brings information about prison from prisoners point of view. It sums up the particular needs and problems re…

Review of the book Hana Hašková, Zuzana Uhde (eds.): Women and Social Citizenship in Czech Society: Continuity and Change.

The following text presents the results of sociological survey, conducted by Center for Public Opinion Research, Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, in september 2009. This extensive field survey mapped attitudes and public opinion on selected topics and issues that touch the twentieth anniversary of the November revolution in 1989.

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Pirate parties are new phenomena in politics. The first pirate party was established in Sweden in 2006 and inspired rise of pirate parties across the world. The aim of this article is to review discussion on pirate parties, describe major pirate issues and pirate parties’ sympathizers as well as to attempt to explain the rise of pirate parties. Pirate parties may be conceived as a sort of liberal parties, which are focused on free internet, communication and unrestrained access to public in…

This article describes the results of an initial survey which is a part of broader project of sociological research into the historical consciousness of inhabitants of the Czech Republic. Firstly, the topic is put into the context of conceptions of historical consciousness and collective memory. This is followed by an outline of the public's interests in history and its different fields, their sources of information and self-evaluation of historical knowledge.

The article focuses on the description of the Czech religiosity. It shows that Czech society is not as secularized as it is often argued. First part of the article analyzes the traditional measures of religiosity: church affiliation and church attendance. Using data from the Census and ISSP 2008, we show that the level of church attendance is relatively stable in the Czech society but the self-declared church affiliation is decreasing.

This theoretical essay explores the concepts of cultural and popcultural citizenships in connection with the period of state socialism in 70s and 80s in Czechoslovakia. The main intention is to test the potential of the concept of popcultural citizenship, which is inspired by John Hartley´s “do-it-yourself citizenship”. Another aim is to examine textual properties of so called “normalization” television serials with regard to the extent to which it allowed for semiosis to be controll…

The article focuses on leisure activities in the Czech Republic. After the introductory part defining leisure and its functions, data from the international research ISSP 2007 Leisure and Sport are analyzed. Frequencies of 13 leisure activities and perceived functions of leisure are described and the Czech results are briefly compared with the average of 18 European countries. Then attention is paid to the structure of leisure activities in the Czech society.

The aim of the study is to explore the valence theory’s account of voter turnout using open-ended questions which measured the main reason given by voters for electoral abstention. The focus was on the claim of the valence theory concerning the respondent’s expected benefit from participating in an election. Data from five post-election studies undertaken between 2004 and 2010 are analysed. The empirical results reveal that electoral abstention is explained by four key factors.