Georgia may be the most homophobic country in Europe

[This article first appeared on the Caucasus Data Blog, a joint production of CRRC Georgia and OC Media. It was written by Dustin Gilbreath, Deputy Research Director at CRRC Georgia, and Giorgi Babunashvili, a Senior Researcher at CRRC Georgia. The views presented in the article reflect the views of the authors' alone and not the views of CRRC Georgia or any related entity.]

Survey data suggests that Georgia may be the most homophobic country in Europe.

Recent events in Georgia have once again highlighted the extent of homophobia in Georgia, and survey data suggests that the country may be the most homophobic on the continent.

On 5 July, a homophobic riot took place in Tbilisi. While the riot is a tragedy, it also reflects the fact that Georgia is the most homophobic in Europe for which data is available on the International Social Survey programme (ISSP) survey. 

Given the participation of priests in the riot, one might expect more religious people to be more homophobic. However, the data suggests that homophobia is prevalent throughout society and how important religion is in someone’s life is not correlated with homophobic attitudes. 

The ISSP survey asked respondents in 33 countries, mainly in Europe, whether sexual relations between two adults of the same sex are always wrong. In Georgia, 84% said it was always wrong, compared with an average of only 37% among all countries. 

The next closest country on the survey was Turkey, with 80% of the public there reporting that same-sex sexual relations were always wrong. By comparison, only 69% of Russians reported the same. In Hungary, which the European Union is currently suing for passing homophobic legislation, roughly half as many (45%) people said it was always wrong. Neighbouring Armenia and Azerbaijan were not part of the survey.

The data also varies by age and sex. Young people tended to be less homophobic than older people and women tended to be more homophobic than men, with the exception of men and women in the 35–54 age range, who were equally homophobic. 

In the most recent riots, priests played an active role. This too is perhaps unsurprising given that priests also engaged in violence in the 2013 International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia homophobic riots. Further, the church established the ‘Day of Family Purity’ in the years following the 2013 riots to prevent events marking International Day Against Homophobia from being held. 

In this regard, the data tends to suggest that Orthodox Christian countries are more homophobic than others. The only exception to this pattern was that the one Muslim country in the dataset, Turkey, was more homophobic than Orthodox countries on average. 

While Orthodox countries appeared to be more homophobic overall than countries where other religions predominate, how strongly someone evaluates the importance of religion in their lives was not correlated with whether or not they hold a homophobic view. This suggests that religious belief is not necessarily the issue, rather, that generalised homophobia in society is.

The riots witnessed on 5 July show Georgia has a problem with homophobia, to put it lightly. The data suggests that it is among the worst in Europe. While the church instigated violence, individual religiosity does not appear to be the culprit in whether or not someone is homophobic. 

The data used in this article are available here.

Mental health and the pandemic

[Note: This post first appeared on the Caucasus Data Blog, a joint production of CRRC Georgia and OC Media. It was written by Tsisana Khundadze and Mariam Kobaladze, Senior Researchers at CRRC Georgia. The views presented within this article are the authors’ alone, and do not reflect the views of UN Women, UNDP, CRRC Georgia, or any related entity.]

Nearly half of Georgians’ report negative impacts on their psychological health because of the pandemic, and women have been one of the worst affected groups. 

Although the pandemic has been primarily a physical health crisis, it has also had large effects on people’s mental health. The pandemic altered the way people study, work, and travel — as well as almost every other aspect of everyday life.

Research from other countries has shown the pandemic has led to a significant rise in symptoms of anxiety disorder and/or depressive disorder. 

The Rapid Gender Assessment survey CRRC-Georgia conducted for UN Women and UNDP in October 2020 asked the adult population of Georgia if their own or their children’s psychological health had been affected as a result of the Coronavirus. 

The results showed that women were significantly more likely to experience psychological health challenges as were people who experienced delayed access to services and significant changes to their everyday lives.

Unsurprisingly, given the uncertainty and stress involved in the pandemic, large shares of Georgians report they or their children experienced negative psychological outcomes from the pandemic. Data from the Rapid Gender Assessment survey shows that COVID-19 negatively affected around half of Georgians’ psychological health. In contrast, only 19% of Georgians who have children report that their children experienced psychological issues.

Although the majority of the population did not experience major issues in accessing basic services, around a third (31%) of Georgians reported some or major difficulties in accessing health services. Overall, 40% reported having at least some difficulty in accessing one of the services listed on the chart below. Aside from accessing services, 25% of working people also experienced a significant change in that they started working from home.

Plausibly, experiencing difficulty in accessing the important services listed above or significant changes in daily life would increase someone’s stress and anxiety levels. To explore whether this took place, a series of regression models testing for associations between these issues in addition to demographic factors are explored below.

The first regression analysis shows that women were 1.4 times more likely to report experiencing mental health issues than men. There were no significant differences between age groups, settlement types, education levels, employment statuses, or whether or not the household had children living in it.

Challenges with access to basic services are associated with mental health problems, but not the move to remote work. The more difficulty a person encountered in accessing basic services, the more likely they were to report that their mental health was affected. While a person with no difficulty accessing services had a 42 percent chance of experiencing mental health problems, a person who had difficulty accessing six services had an 87 percent chance of experiencing them. 

Note: This chart was generated from a regression model. The model includes sex (male, female), age group (18-34, 35-54, 55+), settlement type (capital, urban, rural), education (secondary or lower, secondary technical, higher than secondary), employment status before pandemic (employed, not employed), change in typical workplace (which shows if a person had to start working from home instead of the office. Change in typical workplace, no change in typical workplace), having children in the household (no children, household has children), and an index of difficulty in accessing various services.

A second regression analysis also shows a number of differences between those who reported their children experiencing mental health challenges during the pandemic. 

People living in the capital were 1.5 times more likely to say their children experienced issues with mental health compared with people in other urban and rural areas. There were no significant differences between genders, age groups, education levels, and employment statuses when controlling for other factors. Notably, there were gender-related differences when the regression only considered demographic factors, but the association was no longer significant after taking into account non-demographic variables.

People who experienced a change in their typical workplace were 1.9 times less likely to say their children experienced mental health issues than people who did not have any significant changes in the workplace. The more difficulty a person encountered in accessing basic services, the more likely they were to report their children’s mental health was affected. Additionally, people who reported that their own mental health was affected by COVID-19 were around six times more likely to say their children’s mental health was affected, compared to people, who did not say their own mental health was affected. 

Note: This chart was generated from a regression model. The model includes sex (male, female), age group (18-34, 35-54, 55+), settlement type (capital, urban, rural), education (secondary or lower, secondary technical, higher than secondary), employment status before pandemic (employed, not employed), change in typical workplace (which shows if a person had to start working from home instead of office. Change in typical workplace, no change in typical workplace), reporting COVID-19 affecting own mental health (not affected, affected), and index of difficulty in accessing various services.

About half of the public experienced mental health problems as a result of the pandemic, and women were particularly likely to admit they experienced issues around this. Above and beyond all other factors though, people who had trouble accessing basic services were most likely to be affected.

The data used in this article is available here.

Who lies about how they voted?

Note: This article first appeared on the Caucasus Data Blog, a joint production of CRRC Georgia and OC Media. It was written by Koba Turmanidze, President at CRRC Georgia. The views presented in this article represent the views of the author alone and do not necessarily coincide with the views of CRRC Georgia or any related entity.

When the wording of questions in post-election polling is modified, the responses from survey respondents change along partisan lines. 

Self-reported election turnout in post-election surveys is often considerably higher than official turnout records. The gap likely stems from picking too many active voters as respondents since voters are also more likely to participate in surveys. Yet another potentially more substantial reason is over-reporting due to social desirability bias: respondents feel they are under social pressure to demonstrate fulfilment of their civic duties on election day. 

This blog describes a replication of a widespread approach to reducing social desirability bias in self-reported turnout by asking the turnout question in three different ways: a traditional direct question, providing an example of turnout over-reporting, and including face-saving answer options in the turnout question. 

The question wording did not have an effect on self-reported election turnout overall, because different partisan groups reacted to the question-wording in different ways. Non-partisans and opposition supporters were less likely to report turnout when additional information was provided. In contrast, telling Georgian Dream supporters about turnout over-reporting increased over-reporting among Georgian Dream supporters.         

Many studies have demonstrated that wording matters for turnout questions: when respondents are exposed to a straightforward ‘yes’ and ‘no’ question about their participation in recent elections, they tend to over-report. However, when respondents are also given an option to select face-saving responses in addition to ‘yes’ and ‘no’, self-reported turnout decreases. 

A large-scale study of 19 surveys in five democracies, which used the face-saving response option, ‘I usually vote, but did not this time’, showed mixed results. In 11 surveys, face-saving options significantly decreased self-reported voting, while it had no effect in the remaining eight cases.

According to official data, 57% voted in Georgia’s parliamentary elections in 2020, while 75% said they did on the Caucasus Barometer survey right after the elections. To investigate whether people report their voting differently depending on the question wording, an experiment was conducted on CRRC-Georgia’s omnibus survey (12-19 April, 2021). 

The sample was randomly split into three equal groups. One group received a traditional direct question about whether they voted or not in the October 2020 parliamentary elections. The second group received information about the discrepancy between official statistics and survey results (57% official, 75% reported) before asking about their own turnout. The third group could select two additional options in addition to ‘yes’ and ‘no’: ‘I intended to vote, but could not manage at the last moment’ or ‘I did not intend to vote, but was asked at the last moment and did not refuse’.

At first glance, the data appear to suggest voters over-report turnout no matter the question formulation. On the traditional direct question, 77% reported voting. When the over-reporting message was included, the number declined to 73%, though the difference is not statistically significant. The question with additional face-saving options also resulted in a substantively similar number (79%).  

Looking at who was more or less likely to report voting, partisans were significantly more likely to report voting than non-partisans (i.e. those who could not name any party closest to their views or were not sure if such a party existed). Likewise, residents of rural areas were more likely to report turnout than voters in Tbilisi. Voters with tertiary education, voters above the age of 55, and employed people reported voting more often than voters with no tertiary education, younger voters, and those not working.  

While the three types of questions made no difference for the population at large, they had significantly different effects on supporters of different parties. For non-partisan voters, the over-reporting message worked as intended, decreasing reported turnout from 74% to 64%. On the other hand, face-saving options did not change answers of non-partisans significantly. For Georgian Dream voters, the over-reporting message had the opposite effect. When they heard that the public significantly over-reported turnout in recent elections, their reported turnout increased from 79% (on the direct question) to 91%. For opposition supporters (all parties combined except for the ruling party), face-saving options had the expected negative effect, it reduced reported turnout from 88 to 74%.

This survey experiment showed that question-wording does not have an effect on reported turnout, overall. However, the reason for the overall zero effect is that different question types have different and opposing effects for different partisan groups. While for non-partisans and opposition supporters more nuanced question wording significantly decreased self-reported turnout, for ruling party supporters, the over-reporting message served as a mobilizing factor. When exposed to the information that over-reporting was a norm, they felt that they had to over-report even more.