Oliver Nahkur

The Institute of Social Sciences of the CSPS of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Košice is an interdisciplinary workplace of social sciences and humanities with a primary research focus on the area of Central Europe in the field of social psychology, sociology and history.

By taking the “profiles of change” approach, we aim to explore multi-nationally the change of children’s overall subjective well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the role of social distancing experience, pandemic-related anxiety, and psychological needs fulfillment in this. We use International Children’s Worlds COVID-19 Supplement Survey data collected in 2021 from approximately 20,000 children primarily aged 9–13 years from 16 countries across four continents. Descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression analysis are used. We found that in all countries, most commonly children’s overall subjective well-being decreased. The decrease was most notable in Turkey, but also in Germany, and Bangladesh. Among different factors, higher pandemic-related school anxiety helped most consistently, almost in all countries, to explain children’s belonging to “decliners” profile. This study offered us an opportunity to extend the evidence base of social-distancing measures impacts on children’s well-being, especially on overall subjective well-being to different national contexts.

Regional disparities are one of the sources of social inequality. The empirical study is based on theoretical concept of components of immigration-related ethnic conflicts. The chapter analyses immigration-related conflict risks sources. These conflicts manifest as tensions arising from the interaction between newcomers, often hailing from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and the established population. This study provides insights into immigration-related ethnic conflict risk levels across 75 Estonian municipalities, offering an understanding of regional risk factors and regional distribution of risks. Using the risk components, we quantify immigration-related conflict risk and use hierarchical cluster analysis to categorize municipalities into distinct types by interaction of conflict components. The empirical analyses reveal segregation of immigration-related ethnic conflict risk; however, this risk varies significantly among different municipality groups and is to a certain extent related with immigration. Three different groups of municipalities can be distinguished in Estonia. A total of 30% of all municipalities have elevated risk levels. In these municipalities, the readiness for conflict is higher than linear interaction with migration rates would predict. We conclude that immigration-related ethnic conflicts are dynamic phenomena shaped by the interplay of immigration processes and pre-existing ethnic divisions within societies.

This study aims at ferreting out a sparse subset, among the many democracy indicators, that best predicts lack-of-corruption (LoC). Two factors enable the authors to improve on previous research. First, the Varieties of Democracy (VD) data have become available over an extended time span, involving an unprecedented number of separate indicators. Second, the authors apply previously neglected methods, such as Gaussian standardization and measures to avoid overfitting. They also reduce random error on the LoC side by using the mean of two separate indices, VD and Transparency International, that correlate with R² = 0.81. This results in an optimal set of 11 democracy indicators that predict the mean LoC with R² = 0.87, close to what one could ideally expect to achieve. Among the five main categories VD distinguishes, the indicators that predict lack-of-corruption are mainly part of Liberal and Egalitarian Democracy, with lesser incidence of Electoral Democracy. This leaves out Participatory, and Deliberative Democracy.

The authors wish to make the following changes to their paper (Nahkur and Kutsar 2022)

As a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, social-distancing measures have been implemented worldwide, including school closures. Previous studies indicated that children's relational social cohesion with family (RSC-Fa) and friends (RSC-Fr) may have decreased during the pandemic, but some children described that positive experiences were gained from the confinement measures of social distancing. Mostly, these studies are qualitative or capture a single country and have an exploratory character. Using data collected in 2021 of more than 20,000 children primarily aged 9–13 years as part of the International Children's Worlds COVID-19 Supplement Survey from 18 countries (Germany, Turkey, Bangladesh, Italy, Albania, Romania, Chile, Wales, Taiwan, Belgium, Algeria, Israel, Russia, South Korea, Indonesia, Estonia, Finland, and Spain), this study aimed to examine how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected children's RSC-Fa and RSC-Fr and explore the role of relational factors. RSC-Fa and RSC-Fr are measured through satisfaction in relationships with family members and friends before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, respectively. We employed descriptive statistics, cluster analysis, and multinomial logistic regression analysis. Our analyses confirmed the decrease in RSC-Fa and RSC-Fr, with a noticeably bigger decrease in RSC-Fr. Five profiles of change in RSC emerged: (1) gainers in both RSC; (2) gainers in RSC-Fa and decliners in RSC-Fr; (3) no change in either RSC; (4) decliners in RSC-Fa and gainers in RSC-Fr; and (5) decliners in both RSC. The quantity and quality of children's relationships differ by their profiles of change in RSC. For example, it was significantly more likely that “decliners in both RSC” had to be at home all day because of COVID-19 than “gainers in both RSC” or “no changers.” Mainly, the quantity of relationship factors, and among different quality factors, only autonomy perceptions, help to explain the children belonging to the “gainers in both RSC” profile compared to the “no changers.” Meanwhile, almost all the quantity and quality of relationships factors help to explain children's belonging to the “decliners in both RSC” profile compared to “no changers.” In conclusion, our study confirmed the importance of keeping schools open to protect the RSC of children.