Institute of Urban History - International project “Happiness, wealth, poverty and life satisfaction in the material and spiritual dimensions: a view of students of “post-Soviet” space (based on students’ essays)”

International project “Happiness, wealth, poverty and life satisfaction in the material and spiritual dimensions: a view of students of “post-Soviet” space (based on students’ essays)”

During the 2012-2013 academic year there has been implemented international project “Happiness, wealth, poverty and life satisfaction in the material and spiritual dimensions: a view of students of “post-Soviet” space (based on students’ essays)” (coordinator – I. Kodina), which is a part of a wider project HESP ReSET «Wealth, Poverty and Life Satisfaction in Transition Societies» (director – S. Yakubovskiy), which is implemented by the Open Society Institute and Central European University (Budapest).

This project was made possible through the efforts of a dozen researchers and their 275 students from Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Ukraine. The goal of the project – to investigate the notion of the student community from post-Soviet countries about happiness, life satisfaction, wealth and poverty. Students of different courses, specialties and forms of education had the opportunity express their thoughts in 4 blocks of topics that concern the explanatory and descriptive aspects. As a result of processing of the essays researchers got invaluable opportunity not only to substantiate the method of the essays as a scientific method of gathering of qualitative information, to identify its strengths and weaknesses, but also to reveal the deeper context of the studied subject. Software NVivo 10 was used in the processing of essays.

The project was implemented in the “urban space” of Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan), Ivanovo (Russia), Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv and Berdyansk (Ukraine). From Berdyansk in the project involved prof. V. Konstantinova, prof. I. Lyman and students of the social-humanitarian faculty of BSPU.