Monthly Archives: December 2017

05 Dec

Books in childhood households, Eurasia, 2015

via GIPHY

The EBRD Life in Transition survey from 2015 asked participants about their childhood – “About how many books were in your childhood home? Do not count magazines, newspapers, or school books.”

Books in the childhood home is frequently used as a predictor of future educational attainment. But I’m curious for another reason. Some people argue that Azerbaijan, as a whole, isn’t as interested in reading/literacy/education as some other countries. This seemed like an interesting way to test this. Now of course, books cost money, so there is a tremendous influence of wealth here. Also note the high don’t knows in Azerbaijan – people are nervous about taking surveys there.

05 Dec

Political system preferences in Eurasia, 2015

I’ve been playing with the 2015 EBRD Life in Transition survey dataset for the past few days. I saw an interesting question about political system preferences.

Whereby people were asked to agree most with one of these statements:
* Democracy is preferable to any other form of political system

* Under some circumstances, an authoritarian government may be preferable
to a democratic one

* For people like me, it does not matter whether a government is democratic
or authoritarian

or don’t know

The results were pretty exciting. We have to acknowledge, of course, that many people know that the “right” answer is “democracy!!!!” so there is some social desirability at play here. But nonetheless, the results are telling.

Check out all of those “don’t knows” in Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan!

04 Dec

Azerbaijan – 2015 sources of information

The EBRD Life in Transition survey changed their wording on this question quite a bit this wave, so it is difficult to compare to the past. But here I present the frequency of Azerbaijanis using various media as an information source.  The question says: “People use different sources to learn what is going on in their country and the world. For each of the following sources, please indicate how often you use it:” with a variety of choices from never to daily.

I find the talking with others at 73% really interesting. As comparison, here are other countries in the region:

04 Dec

Armenia – 2015 sources of information

The EBRD Life in Transition survey changed their wording on this question quite a bit this wave, so it is difficult to compare to the past. But here I present the frequency of Armenians using various media as an information source.  The question says: “People use different sources to learn what is going on in their country and the world. For each of the following sources, please indicate how often you use it:” with a variety of choices from never to daily.

Not surprisingly, TV rules. Magazines aren’t very popular in Armenia.

04 Dec

Frequency of using the Internet and social media as an information source in Eurasia, 2015

The EBRD Life in Transition survey changed their wording on this question quite a bit this wave, so it is difficult to compare to the past. But here I present the frequency of Eurasians using the Internet and social media as an information source.  The question says: “People use different sources to learn what is going on in their country and the world. For each of the following sources, please indicate how often you use it:” with a variety of choices from never to daily.

This is Internet

and social media

It is hard to say if people understood the difference between the Internet and social media. I’d guess that they did not. I eyeball’d the crosstabs and it seems that the nevers in both groups are pretty heavily overlapping.

And, of course, anyone that knows anything about media consumption knows that the vast majority of people get their news from TV. Nonetheless, I wanted to also provide a bit of context for the South Caucasus, Russia, and Turkey. If you’re interested in other countries, please contact me.

More to come!

04 Dec

PC/tablet ownership in Eurasia in 2015

A few years ago I made some graphics and a blog post showing personal computer ownership in Europe and Eurasia based on the EBRD’s Life in Transition survey.

Last week I presented these data to some graduate students and that reminded me that I should update this! There are 2015-2016 data available and the picture has changed quite a bit. Also, notably, the question wording changed. Now people are asked if anyone in their household owns a personal computer, laptop, or tablet and if they don’t is it because they cannot afford it or for another reason. I present both here.


Link to the original image