28 Apr

WVS: Trust in others – Azerbaijan and world

More on methodology here.

I’m currently working on 2 different papers that deal with trust of others in Azerbaijan, so I was very excited to see this. As per what literature says, Azerbaijanis have very low trust in strangers and very high trust in family.

freq

means

 

And here’s the means of the world. Again, 1 is high trust and 4 is no trust. Azerbaijan has very poor trust in strangers compared to the globe

world

09 Apr

Identification with local and global – Azerbaijan

In the 2012 social networks and media survey done by CRRC in Azerbaijan, respondents were asked about belonging to various groups.

ident

ETA: here’s the breakdown by region – Baku, regional cities, villages 1 = strongly disagree and 4 = strongly agree. All differences are statistically significant.

f

Capital and rural people much more likely to view themselves as independent people.

family

Identification with family is strongest in the capital and least important in rural areas? I need to think about this a bit.

e

Neighborhood identification is strongest in capital, then downward. Again, need to think about this.

 

d

Community/municipality is most important in rural area, least in capital.

c

Capital city people see themselves as citizens of the nation the most.

b

Not surprisingly, capital city people are the most connected to Azerbaijanis around the world.

a

And similarly, capital city people are the most globally oriented.

08 Apr

Trust and Relying on Others in the Caucasus

I’m working on a project right now that looks at trust, so I wanted to share some results from the 2013 Caucasus Barometer.

Here’s some work on trust from 2012. And more from the EBRD Life in Transitions study.

First, the generalized trust question – there is scholarly debate about how people interpret this question, but it seems like many people think that this means other people in the street and thus is tied up with sense of safety.

trust

In this case, Armenians are the least trusting, Georgians the most. (In an ANOVA, all these differences reported here are statistically significant).

 

But then when people are asked about their family/friends/neighbors helping, things change.

money

ill

reapir

In all of these, Azerbaijanis are far less likely to believe that their family/friends/whomever would help them.

Without a doubt, “help” isn’t the same as trust, but it does say something about being able to rely on others for help. And it looks like there are some very different patterns in these states.

30 Dec

Trust and Gender in the Caucasus

I wrote a blog post a few weeks ago about interpersonal trust (using EBRD data). One of my arguments is that Azerbaijanis have very low interpersonal trust. After a conversation with a girlfriend, I had the idea to look at gender differences in trust as well. This is with CRRC data.

First, without gender, you can see that generally Azerbaijanis have much lower trust in others than Armenians or Georgians do, but this varies by question. (These are on a 1-10 scale with 1 not trust, 10 trust completely or 1 total disagree and 10 totally agree).

f

e

d

b

a

In this next chart with gender, you can see gender differences in a variety of questions related to interpersonal trust. The only time that there was no significant difference in trust between men and women is for Armenians with the question “there are many people I can trust completely” – otherwise all these differences are significant.

gender1

But looking at the two extremes – completely agree and completely disagree, things are also interesting…

v

In this question of people that one can trust completely, Georgians seem to have it the worst, with only 3 or 4% having someone like that. Overall gender differences aren’t that stark in this question.

w

Here for money lending, big country differences. Georgians can’t get a break, huh? Gender differences here exist, but not too harshly.

x

For reliable people, Georgians again are in a bad spot.

y

Help repair the apartment – well, this is a lot to ask of people, right? Georgians again are not doing well here.

z

I don’t want to get sick in the Caucasus. Looks like people have trouble finding people to  help care for them. Again, no major gender differences here.

So overall, despite there being a statistically significant difference in trust between genders, it doesn’t really manifest in these practical questions.

 

02 Dec

Interpersonal trust in Europe and Eurasia

Interpersonal trust is, arguably, the most important concept for a society. Interpersonal trust is understood as the general inclination of people to trust their fellow citizens (Hall, 2002). Interpersonal trust is related to EVERYTHING – democratization, economic wellbeing… you name it.

I did an analysis of some of the trust measures in the ERBD Life in Transition survey from 2011.

The first question asks to what extent people trust their family. So since it was a scale of 1-5 (1 = completely distrust; 5 = completely trust), you can see that people in nearly every country trust their families!

These groupings 1-11 are statistically significant differences in the averages. Countries are listed in multiple columns because, for example, there is no statistically significant difference between Poland and the Czech Republic. But there is also no difference between the Czech Republic and France. Yet there is a difference between Poland and France. Make sense?

Poles are the least trustful of their family (but again, a 4.36/5 – still really trusting!) and Tajiks are the most trusting. There is an argument that poverty results in higher trust because you need these people to survive. Yet, Sweden (as usual) is at the height of family trust. Of interest to this blog’s readers, Armenians and Azerbaijanis really trust their families 4.92 and 4.89/5. Georgians are a little lower at 4.71/5.

family

The next question asks about trusting one’s neighbors. I suspect that there are some rural/urban differences here, but for the purpose of this blog post, I’m focusing on country-level.

Slovakians are the least trusting with 3.46/5. Uzbeks are the highest with 4.37/5 (although, as I’ve written before, I don’t really trust the Uzbek data in this study.) Georgians are fairly trusting of neighbors with 3.92/5; Azerbaijanis at 3.81/5; and Armenians at 3.76/5.

neighbor

Then trusting one’s friends, where Albanians are the least trusting with 3.59/5. Azerbaijanis and Armenians aren’t terribly trusting of their friends either – 3.76 and 3.78/5. Again, Swedes are the most trusting of friends with 4.57/5.

friends

Next is people you meet for the first time. This is really important.

Azerbaijanis are the lowest with 1.89/5! Wow – Azerbaijanis REALLY don’t trust new people, do they? Wow! Armenians aren’t too trusting either, 2.29/5, but still, significantly higher than Azerbaijanis. Swedes are the most trusting, 3.57/5. Georgians fall in the middle, 2.58/5.

meet

People of another religion is next. Armenia, a very homogenous country, comes in with the lowest trust 1.83/5. Azerbaijan is next, 2.18/5. Other post-Soviet countries are also quite low here. Guess that whole Soviet tolerance thing wasn’t so solid. Swedes come in the highest, as usual.

religion

Then trusting people of different nationalities – Armenia and Azerbaijan come in as the least trusting again, with 2.23 and 2.27/5. The most trusting, of course, is Sweden. Kazakhstan is high too, probably because it is so multi-ethnic.

nationality

So overall, this is important because if people don’t trust each other (in the neighborhood, friends, other people in the country), they aren’t going to be able to engage in positive collective behaviors. They also will be less inclined to want to have good things for everyone – like good healthcare and education.

And, for better or worse, interpersonal trust isn’t easily built.

02 Jul

Political Institutional Trust in Armenia

This is a study that I did with the 2008 (collected in fall) Caucasus Barometer. As a warning, it is pretty stats-heavy. If you’re going to cite this paper, please use this citation:

Pearce, K.E. (2010). Political trust in the post-coup attempt Republic of Armenia. Demokratizatsiya, 19, 58-83.

Abstract:
This paper presents a model of institutional political trust in Armenia after a coup attempt. The model of political trust was created using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Results indicated strong support for a three-factor model with civil society, elected government and non-elected government as factors.

demokratz2010