Prioritizing the personal: People talk more about personal issues than political events

There is nothing new in the idea that, in general, people would primarily be interested in their own lives, rather than in social or political events. In other words, social and political events will, most probably, be overshadowed by events in one’s personal life. CRRC’s 2015 Caucasus Barometer (CB) survey data provides more detailed insights on this. In this blog post, we compare answers to two CB questions: “When you get together with your close relatives and friends, how often do you discuss each other’s private problems?” and “When you get together with your friends and close relatives, how often do you discuss politics / current affairs?” in Armenia and Georgia.

The population of both countries report discussing private problems with much higher frequency than politics and/or current affairs. Interestingly, while the populations of the two countries report rather similar low frequencies of discussing politics and/or current affrairs, the population of Georgia reports discussing private problems frequently almost twice as often as the population of Armenia.


Note: Originally, 10-point scales were used for these questions, with code ‘1’ corresponding to the answer “Never” and code ‘10’ corresponding to the answer “Always”. For the charts in this blog post, the original scales were recoded into 3-point scales, with codes 1, 2 and 3 combined into the category “Rarely”, codes 4 through 7 combined into the category “With average frequency”, and codes 8, 9 and 10 combined into the category “Frequently”. Answer options “Don’t know” and “Refuse to answer” (less than 1% of the cases) were excluded from the analysis. 

When looking only at the most radical answers on the original 10-point scales (“Never” and “Always”, i.e. codes 1 and 10), in both Armenia and Georgia the share of those who report always discussing politics and/or current affairs is much less than the share of those who report never discussing these issues. In Armenia, 8% report always discussing politics and/or current affairs when they get together with close relatives and friends, as opposed to 29% who report never doing so. The respective shares are 11% and 25% in Georgia.

When it comes to the shares of the population recording the most radical answers about the frequency of discussing private problems, the pictures in the two countries are quite different. While practically equal shares report discussing private problems with close relatives and friends in Armenia either always (14%) or never (16%), in Georgia, four times as many report always discussing private problems when they get together with close relatives and friends (29%), compared to 7% who report never doing so.

Even when researchers rely on self-reported information only, as is the case with these CB questions, a high frequency of discussing certain issues reflects people’s interest in them. In Armenia and especially in Georgia, few people spend time talking politics. Not surprisingly, these are mostly older people. While there are no large male-female differences, the reported frequency of discussing politics with close relatives and friends differs for the population of different settlement types. Most surprisingly, the findings in this respect are rather different for the capital cities of Armenia and Georgia.

Thus, although the general patterns of frequency of discussing different issues with close relatives and friends are similar in Armenia and Georgia, there are certain important differences that would merit further research. Specifically, one important question to answer is, are Armenians – especially those living in Yerevan – much more reserved while discussing politics?

CRRC’s Caucasus Barometer and other survey data is available at our Online Data Analysis portal.