Ideas and Ideals

The authors argue the need to develop a strategy for the country’s socio-economic break through, the formation of a new type of economic system - a knowledge-based economy. A qualitative characteristic of this type of economy in the form of a conceptual model is given in the article, and they also consider approaches to quantify the knowledge economy.

In this article the problem of reflecting historical dynamics of a society in modern humanitarian knowledge is discussed. The author shows, that in the modern humanitarian knowledge the tendencies to imitation the cognitive activities are widely presented that is reflected in the reduction of real conceptual and logical complexity of theoretical descriptions of social phenomena. This reduction is generated, among other things, by actual ignoring the principle of historicism in characterizing the studied objects. First of all, with such an approach the qualitative variability of social phenomena is ignored. To reveal the qualitative variability of social phenomena is possible on the basis of special reflection of their historical dynamics. The paper proposes a method to overcome such imitative trends in the consistent implementation of sociocultural cognition on the basis of the principle of historicism. According to this principle any phenomenon should be described theoretically in the whole process of its own internal development. Any social object at every moment of its existence is the result of its own genesis. That is why the consistent categorical description of dynamics of its development as a quality formation through internally irreducible to one another stages would really implement the cognitive principles, declared in the sociocultural approach. The proposed solution is constructed on the basis of socio-philosophical reflection of the historical cognition characteristics of a society as a dynamic system.

The article explains that the relevance of the topic is related to the need of developing youth entrepreneurship. Problems of development of entrepreneurship among young people are related to a number of reasons, including target settings, business motivation, support for authorities at all levels from the state to local governments, legal support, the attitude to entrepreneurship on the part of society, the attitude to the female and male entrepreneurship . Development of youth entrepreneurship can be analyzed from the perspective of endogenous and exogenous factors. Exogenous factors include government and legal support of business, the use of the financial system, the image of the entrepreneur in the mass consciousness. Endogenous factors include business-motivation and personal characteristics of young entrepreneurs. These factors have received empirical testing in the study of youth attitudes to business conducted on the total sample of Tomsk and Novosibirsk. Relevant for entrepreneurs is to obtain services from the state to realize their business project, as well as an information environment conducive to learning and sharing experiences in the field of entrepreneurship. The main problems of the youth of the Russian business are under-utilization of resources offered by the state, public attitudes towards entrepreneurs. Gender aspects are manifested in relation to the female and male entrepreneurship.

The socio-economic information published by the statistical and other authorities is a basic source of information available for a quantitative analysis and forecasting. To use this information correctly it is necessary to know the methodology, techniques applied to calculating indicators and data aggregation, as well as the methods for checking the results obtained. The paper discusses various methods allowing better assessments and more reliable conclusions such as: the verification of hypothesis on the other statistics, the use of alternative models for the same data set, the combination of different data analysis, including historical methods, artificial index computation etc. An important task in analytics and forecasting is to assess accuracy of the initial information, accumulation of errors occurred in data processing, and, therefore, accuracy of assessments obtained. The paper also discusses the issues of application of expert evaluation methods and qualitative characteristics processing techniques.

The article considers the technique and practice of use of quantitative methods at the development of the standard of the state services in the sphere of culture and monitoring of its implementation. The standard of the state service is a basis of interaction of the supplier and consumer of services, assessment and quality control of services by the state and necessary element of the control system and budgeting by the results. The technique of standardization of the state services, according to which the standard of services of theatrical entertainment organizations and system of monitoring of their rendering was created, is suggested. This technique considers process of standardization and assessment of quality as a sequence of certain stages: development of the standard, monitoring of quality of the actually provided services, estimates of the degree of compliance of quality of the actually provided state services to the quality standards of these services, integrated assessment of quality of the provided state services, corrections of standard values of indicators or other elements of the quality standard of the state service. The possibilities and limitations of application of quantitative methods at each of these stages in relation to the sphere of culture, in particular for the assessment of activity of the atrical entertainment organizations are shown.

By the mid of 2014 the population of the globe reached 7,2 billion people, with nearly 6 billion living in the developing countries (83 % of the world population), 1,2 billion – in the developed countries (17% of the population of the Earth). If not to take into account the economic aspect, the “developed countries” group is the countries with mainly white, Caucasian population acknowledging Christianity. There is a global modern world trend, which attracts attention – the decrease in the share of the white population from 34 % in 1900 to 17 % in 2014. All changes occurring now are the result of the actions of the certain system laws. Distribution of population of people on a terrestrial surface depends on a set of factors, including the history of development of the specific territory. The population of Africa, mainly adherents of local traditional beliefs and Islam, grew more than 10 times for the last hundred years, and the population of Asia – almost 5 times.

The report analyzes the period of development of Siberia since the beginning of «reorganization» (1985) till 2015. Demographic statistics is the basic element of the quantitative analysis in compari-son of the pre-revolutionary, Soviet and Post-Soviet periods of the development. The modern period (1985–2015) is described using a more developed system of the statistical indicators with sufficient (for assessment of trends) reliability and comparability. Certain conclusions, regarding both defining the modern situation and scenarios of further development of events, are drawn on the basis of the analysis of the dynamics of social and economic indicators, comparisons to the all-Russian trends and conceptual settings of the state control system.

В статье рассматриваются вопросы взаимосвязи социологии и статистики как отраслей научного знания. Обосновывается необходимость использования статистических методов в социологических исследованиях. Показывается, что массовые наблюдения, характерные для статистики, дают возможность измерять социальные явления методом обобщающих показателей. Статистика, выявляя типичные явления, «помогает» социологии увидеть на их фоне качественные образование и процессы. Результатом таких взаимодополняющих исследований выступает конструирование моделей социального развития, которые являются исходным звеном с точки зрения управления социальным объектом.

The problems of environmental safety measurement of territorial entities in the Russian Federation are presented and discussed in the article. The overview of relevant investigations in the environmental safety field is given. The system of initial statistical indicators on a real group (municipal districts of Novosibirsk Region) is formed and tested. The author presents a generalized index of environmental safety based on three indicators: the level of social and economic development, the level of ecological conditions and the level of human resources of the region. The research includes the classification of the Novosibirsk region municipalities on the basis of the environmental safety level. The method of typological grouping (the variety was divided into three groups with equal intervals) and the cluster analysis method (the method of "nearest-neighbor" was applied), and the portfolio analysis matrix were used. The three-dimensional matrix of portfolio analysis is proposed and tested on the actual data during the investigation. The matrix has three coordinate axes that correspond to environmental safety indicators: the level of social and economic development, the level of ecological conditions, and the level of human resources. The convergence of the results of different partitioning algorithm was estimated. This technique adequately estimates the environmental safety for all management levels: municipal, regional and federal. The main advantage of this approach is the opportunity of a territory analysis as well as a dynamic one. The investigation results broaden instrumental and informational opportunities in developing adequate strategies of ecological safety management both for a separate territorial unit and for homogeneous groups. Official data of the Federal State Statistics Service were used for the calculation of indicators.

The territorial statistics as the system of collection of information about a condition of social and economic processes became an example of complex study of the situation in the agrarian sector of the Russian society of the second half of the 19th century. It was perceived as an illustration of additional opportunities of local governments in the post-reform period. Considerable volumes of the obtained statistical data served both as the basis for definition of territorial tax levies and the empirical base of notice able theoretical research. The programs of territorial observations included several methods of data collection. The sample budget survey of farm households became one of the directions of research in the district councils. Innovations of the territorial statistics also concerned the ways of tabular processing of obtained in formation. Programs of research, methods of data collection and ways of its processing make it possible to consider practice of territorial statistical descriptions as an important prerequisite of the development of empirical sociology and practice of sociological research in our country.