Anti-western discourse dashboard: Tracking what the far-right is talking about on Georgian language Facebook

Within the framework of the Russian Propaganda Barometer project, funded by EWMI’s ACCESS program, CRRC-Georgia developed an anti-Western discourse dashboard. The dashboard visualizes what known sources of anti-western propaganda in the Georgian language have been talking about on Facebook since 2015.

The dashboard has a number of functions. It uses thematic modeling to identify what subjects people have been talking about over the years. The topics which different groups have been talking about are also provided by different sources of anti-Western propaganda. In addition, how the different groups (positively or negatively) talk about the West and Russia is provided on the dashboard’s landing page.


Besides the above, the dashboard has a wide variety of other tools. The posts page provides the number of posts on any given day as well as the number of likes, comments, frequency of sharing different sites the construction of networks between different sites, and activity levels during different parts of the week and time of day.


On the tool, the texts tab provides an analysis of the frequency of use of different words and bi-grams for different words used in connection to Russia and the West.


The tool is only available in Georgian, but over the course of the coming months, this blog will have posts describing findings from the data collected on anti-western discourse on Georgian language Facebook in English. To see a previous report from the same project click here, and an article based on that report, click here.

Parents think Georgia’s schools are fine. But are students actually learning?

[Note: This article was originally published here with OC-Media. It is available in Georgian here. This article was written by Meagan Neal, an International Fellow at CRRC-Georgia. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of CRRC-Georgia, the National Democratic Institute, or any affiliated entity.]

Around the world, an increase in the systematic collection of education data has revealed a previously invisible problem: even though more children have access to education than ever before, it does not necessarily mean they are learning. In fact, many students are progressing through school systems without mastering the basic skills necessary to fully participate in society. The gap is so stark it has become known as a ‘learning crisis’.

Given the global trends, a new wave of controversial reforms to Georgia’s school exam system, and a planned increase in the national education budget, what do Georgians think about the quality of their own education system? And should Georgia be concerned about its own students’ learning?

At first glance, public opinion suggests that education quality is not a large problem. Surveys CRRC and NDI conducted in December 2018 suggest that most people think the government is doing a good job providing education to the country’s children.

A plurality of Georgians (50%) thought that the government did a ‘somewhat good’ or ‘very good’ job providing education to all its citizens, while 34% rated the government’s performance as ‘somewhat bad’ or ‘very bad’. Among people with a child in their household currently in school, only 4% rated their family member’s school as ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’.  Most said that it was ‘good’ or ‘very good’.


At the same time, most people also think that private tutoring is necessary to study well, to graduate from secondary school, or to get into university, suggesting Georgia’s schools are falling short of their basic duties.
As the chart below shows, a slight majority (55%) said that it was necessary to have a private tutor to pass secondary school graduation exams. A large majority (73%) said that tutoring was necessary to pass the Unified National Exams to gain entrance to university. Even respondents who rated their family member’s school as ‘good’ tended to agree.


These attitudes towards tutoring could change soon. In February, the government announced that they would abolish secondary school graduation exams and change the requirements for university entrance exams. According to the government, the new measures will allow secondary schools to focus less on test preparation, give universities more autonomy to choose which exams to use for their own admissions processes, and lower expenses for parents by reducing the need for private tutoring.

In March, the Prime Minister also announced that the government would increase education spending annually until 2022 — reaching a maximum of 6% of GDP, a quarter of the country’s budget.

The perceived necessity for tutors says something about the current quality of schooling, and these reforms may be missing the point. After all, abolishing tests will not fix the system if schools are not well-equipped to teach students the essentials of secondary school in the first place. Nor will pumping in more funding lead to better outcomes if those funds are not strategically allocated towards evidence-based strategies to improve learning, rather than an increase in ‘business as usual’ inputs like school infrastructure.

So how much are Georgian students actually learning? National assessment data can give some clues. Georgia has participated in the past few rounds of PISA, an international exam of 15-year-olds’ reading and maths abilities in OECD and partner countries.

The most recent results were not great. Half of the students scored below Level 2 in reading and maths, the PISA threshold for being able to fully participate in school and society. Even having made substantial improvements since 2009, Georgia was still one of the lowest performers among PISA-participating countries in 2015.

What’s more, trends from the 2009 round of PISA as well as the 2015 round of TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study) suggest that most of the gains in performance are driven by urban students, while rural students continue to lag behind.

Can the new reforms help address these inequities? More funding and a reduced focus on national tests could be a good thing for low-performing students — if schools and teachers have the resources and capacity to redirect the energy and funds they would spend on test prep towards better adapting their curriculum and methods to the individual needs of their students, and if they are held accountable for the learning outcomes they deliver.

But right now, like in many countries, it is not clear Georgian schools have the capacity or accountability mechanisms to do so. As Transparency International recently highlighted, government spending on education has already continued to increase over the past eight years without any goals set around actual student learning. Abolishing exams, which, for all their imperfections, can be used as an accountability mechanism, is unlikely to help this.

Despite general perceptions that Georgia’s schools are fine, the data on student achievement and the perceived need for tutors suggest a much deeper problem of learning.

In theory, increased funding could be a great opportunity to address this. But unless the government pivots this spending towards strategies that have been shown to help students learn, such as more effective pedagogy and better teacher performance and accountability, it is unlikely to have much effect.

If they draw lessons from the global conversation around learning, on the other hand, the government can work to ensure that Georgia’s students develop the basic skills necessary to succeed in life — whether they need an exam to graduate or not.

Curious about perceptions of Georgia’s education system? The data used in the above article is available here.

Georgians support technical inspections of motor vehicles, even given the financial burden

[Note: This article was originally published on OC-Media. The text is also available in Georgian here. The article was written by David Sichinava, CRRC-Georgia’s Research Director, and Nino Mzhavanadze, a Junior Researcher at CRRC-Georgia. The views presented in the article do not necessarily represent the views of CRRC-Georgia, the National Democratic Institute, or any related entity.]

In 2018, the Government of Georgia decided to resume mandatory periodic technical inspection of vehicles, which was partially suspended in 2004. From January 2019, all cars are required to pass technical inspection. In 2018, heavier vehicles were required to do so. The change was spurred on by the Association Agreement with the European Union, under which Georgia took responsibility to resume inspections. More practically, the government also began inspections as Georgia’s private vehicle fleet has been recognized as the main source of air pollution in the country. A June 2018, CRRC/NDI survey finds people in Georgia overwhelmingly support the decision.

To learn whether potential costs associated with the reform such as repairing a vehicle to meet standards the technical inspections require would influence support for the reform, a survey experiment was carried out. Half of the sample (the control group) was asked, “In your opinion, is it necessary or not to have technical inspection of vehicles?” The other half (the treatment group) was asked, “In your opinion, is it necessary or not to have technical inspection of vehicles, as a result of which the car owners may be required to repair their vehicles or buy new ones?”

While these questions were randomly assigned, the share of the supporters of the reform does not differ between the two groups, which suggests that, overall, people’s support for the reform does not vary significantly when reminded of the additional costs that will be associated with the reform.
Clearly, car owners will be directly affected by the reform. However, people living in households that reported owning car(s) (41% of the population) feel enthusiastic about obligatory inspections of vehicles. Similar shares in both car-owning and non- car-owning households answered that technical inspections should be necessary.

People living in Tbilisi (96%) and urban settlements (92%) almost unanimously supported resumption of technical inspection, while residents of ethnic minority settlements were much more (62%) reluctant about the changes. There is no difference between respondents who have different perceptions of air quality. Interestingly, those who perceive the quality of air as completely satisfactory, are more likely to support the introduction of technical inspections if they are exposed to the treatment statement.

Opinions do differ along party lines, however. Those who reported the United National Movement (UNM) as the party closest to them were significantly less likely to report technical inspections were necessary (regardless of being in the treatment or control group).

There is a strong consensus among people in Georgia regarding the need for the newly introduced technical inspections for vehicles. People support the idea even when reminded of the costs associated with the reform. The survey also indicates that attitudes towards the reform significantly differ along party lines, hinting at the politicization of the issue.

The data used in this blog post is available here. Replication code is available here.

Choosing a profession: who should decide young people’s career paths?

Choosing a career path is one of the most important decisions that people make in their life. For some, it might be a complicated and anxiety-riddled experience. One reason is that the process of choosing a career begins at a young age when a person may not have thought about what they want to do with their lives. For this, among many other reasons, parents often play a role in deciding what their children study at university, which is often though not always associated with their profession.  However, there are a number of arguments about why it is better to allow a child to choose their own career paths.  Based on the CRRC/NDI June 2018 survey, this blog post describes the adult population of Georgia’s views about whether parents or their children should choose their career, and describes how opinions differ by a number of demographic characteristics.

The survey asked respondents, ”Which of the following statements do you agree with: ‘When choosing a profession [profession has a similar meaning to university major in the Georgian language], the parents [should decide] because a parent knows better what will be useful for his/her child’ or ‘When choosing a profession, the child [should decide] even if the parent thinks that the child is making a mistake.‘”

A majority (75%) of the population agreed that when choosing a profession the child should decide, while 23% answered that the parent(s) should. People living in the capital are more likely to  agree (85%) that the child should decide than people who live in rural settlements (68%). People between the ages of 18-35 are more likely to agree with the statement that children should decide than people of other age groups.  Level of education also is associated with whether people think that children or their parents should decide a child’s future profession. People who have higher than secondary education are more likely to agree with the statement that the child should decide than people with a lower level of education.  Interestingly, there is no visible difference between the answers of people who live in households with children (under 18) and people who do not. Nor is there a difference between men’s and women’s views regarding this issue. Similarly, ethnic minorities and majorities express similar opinions. These results are supported by a logistic regression analysis.

Note: Answer options “Agree with neither”, “Don’t know”, and “Refuse to answer” are not shown on the chart above. The combined share of these responses options was under 4%. 

Overall, most people in Georgia report that when choosing a profession, the child should decide even if the parent thinks that the child is making a mistake.  This opinion is supported more often by people who live in the capital, have higher than secondary education, and young people (18-35).

To explore the data used in this blog post further, visit our Online Data Analysis platform. The results of the regression noted above are available here.

Are there predictors of not knowing and refusing to answer on surveys in Georgia?

Are there variables that predict who is likely to report “Don’t know” or to refuse to answer survey questions more often in Georgia? This blog post looks at this question, using un-weighted Caucasus Barometer 2017 (CB) data for Georgia.

Only questions that were asked to all respondents were considered during the analysis presented in this blog post (a total of 177 questions), and variables were generated for:

1. The number of times a respondent answered “Don’t know” and;
2. The number of times a respondent refused to answer a question.

On average, respondents refused to answer one question on CB 2017. The median number of refuse to answer responses was zero. Respondents answered “Don’t know” to nine questions on average, and the median number was five. As a previous blog post highlighted, people most often report they do not know when asked about political questions and areas of reasonable uncertainty (e.g. their economic futures). When it comes to refusing to answer, people are most likely to refuse to answer questions about their income and politics.

To analyze whether or not demographic variables predicted “Don’t know” and “Refuse to answer” responses, Poisson regression was used. The following demographic variables were included in both regressions: age group (18-35, 36-55, 56+), gender, ethnicity (ethnic minority or ethnic Georgian), settlement type (capital, other urban, rural), and level of education (secondary or lower, vocational, tertiary). Besides demographics, the analysis also included a variable for whether people besides the interviewer and respondent were present during the interview. After the regression analysis, the number of times a respondent would be expected to respond either don’t know or refuse to answer was calculated, controlling for other factors included in the models.

A number of demographic characteristics are associated with higher expected rates of “Don’t know” response. Ethnic minorities, people in rural areas and urban areas outside Tbilisi, people without tertiary education, women, and people over the age of 55 provide more don’t know responses than people in Tbilisi, those with tertiary education, and people under the age of 55. Besides demographics, whether someone is present at an interview that is not participating in it is also associated with how often people report they don’t know. If additional people are present at an interview, then respondents report one fewer don’t know response on average. This may reflect a large number of factors (e.g., maybe people with large families are more certain of their views), however, one plausible explanation is that people do not want to admit they do not know in front of other people.

Some demographic variables also predict “refuse to answer” response options. People in the 36-55 age group refuse to answer questions slightly more often than in other age groups as do people outside Tbilisi, those with tertiary education, and ethnic Georgians.  Besides demographics, the presence of people besides the interviewer at the interview has a significant impact on the frequency of refusing to answer. This again may reflect social pressure of some sort. Rather than respondents being worried about appearing uninformed, one plausible explanation is they are more likely to be worried about appearing socially uncooperative.

While don’t know answers and refusing to answer are both often treated as non-response, these arguably are different types of responses. If they indeed are different, one would expect them not to be strongly correlated. The results of a correlation analysis suggest a very weak (ρ=0.009) and non-significant association, supporting the contention that don’t know and refuse to answer options are indeed different types of responses rather than replacements for the other.

This blog post has looked at whether and which demographic groups respond “Don’t know” and “Refuse to answer” to survey questions more. The results suggest that a variety of demographic variables are significant predictors. In addition, the presence of other people at the interview appears to have an impact on how often people report they don’t know or refuse to answer survey questions, with both declining when people are present.

To download the data used in this blog post, click here.

NGOs in Georgia: Low trust, high expectations? (Part 2)

As discussed in the first part of this blog post, the results of CRRC-Georgia’s survey conducted for the Georgian Civil Society Sustainability Initiative (CSSIGE) project in fall 2017 confirmed that both knowledge about NGOs and trust toward them is quite low in Georgia. This blog post looks at the inconsistency between low trust toward NGOs, on the one hand, and quite positive assessments of their activities, on the other hand.

The most frequent answer about the goal that, in people’s opinion, NGO members are pursuing in Georgia, is to help the population of the country in solving their problems (27%). The second most frequent answer, to receive funding/grants, was chosen from a show card by 16% of the population, and the third most frequent answer, to protect human rights in Georgia, by 13%. Thus, 40% believe the goal of NGOs is to help people in solving their problems or protecting their rights, which is an impressive share, especially given the low level of reported trust in NGOs.

When asked to assess the influence of NGOs in the development of Georgia, the findings are, again, counter-intuitive given the low level of trust. A majority (56%) assess this role as either “definitely positive” (17%) or “mainly positive” (39%), as opposed to the 14% who have chosen negative assessments (“mainly negative” according to 9% and “definitely negative” according to 5%). While 76% of those who report trusting NGOs quite logically say that NGOs’ role in the development of Georgia is positive, 5% assess this role as negative, and 13% answer they don’t know. A third of those who report distrusting NGOs assess NGOs’ role in the development of Georgia as positive and only a slightly larger share (39%) as negative.



Note: For the chart above, answer options “Fully trust” and “Rather trust” were combined into the category “Trust”, and answer options “Fully distrust” and “Rather distrust” were combined into the category “Distrust”.

It would be impossible to find out the causes of such inconsistencies without additional research. At this point, though, it is clear that both knowledge of and attitudes toward NGOs in Georgia are neither systematic nor coherent. Focus groups conducted for the same project suggest one possible explanation for this inconsistency – while not trusting NGOs, the participants’ dominant attitude was that NGOs would not do harm either. Moreover, a belief was reported that life in Georgia is better with NGOs than without them.

To have a closer look at the data, visit CRRC’s online data analysis platform.

NGOs in Georgia: Low trust, high expectations? (Part 1)

Over the last decade, people in Georgia have reported rather low levels of trust toward NGOs. At the same time, when asked during surveys to assess specific aspects of NGO activities, the answers have usually been positive. This blog post is based on the findings of a survey on attitudes toward NGOs collected by CRRC-Georgia in fall, 2017 for the Georgian Civil Society Sustainability Initiative (CSSIGE). The first part of this blog post looks at the most up-to-date data on knowledge of NGOs in Georgia and reported levels of trust toward them. The second part explores the inconsistency between low trust toward NGOs in Georgia, on the one hand, and quite positive assessments of their activities, on the other hand.

Less than a third of the population of Georgia (28%) report trusting NGOs. Most people, though, are either indifferent (37% “neither trusting, nor distrusting” NGOs) or cannot answer the question (17%). The reported level of trust toward NGOs is comparable with the level of trust toward the courts and political parties, with one notable difference: the share of those who cannot answer the question is highest when trust toward NGOs is assessed. This may suggest that people do not always have a clear understanding of what NGOs are for or what they do in Georgia.

To gain an understanding of how solid people’s knowledge of NGOs is, the following question was asked, “I will now name several organizations. Please tell me whether it is an NGO or not. If you have not heard of any of these organizations, tell me you have not heard of it.” Two out of the 10 organizations asked about did not exist in Georgia at the time of the fieldwork.


Note: NGOs are marked with one asterisk (*). Organizations that are not NGOs are marked with two asterisks (**). Organizations that did not exist in Georgia at the time of the fieldwork are marked with three asterisks (***). Correct answers are highlighted in green.

Of the organizations asked about, only the status of the Parliament of Georgia was correctly identified by a large majority (87%). It also had the lowest share of “Don’t know” responses. Over half of the population was correctly informed about the Labor Party, Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA), and the Rustavi 2 TV network. It is quite rare, however, that people consistently provide correct answers about all the organizations asked about. Leaving aside the answers about the two organizations that did not exist at the time of the fieldwork (“Association of the Unemployed” and “Society for Spreading Literacy”), less than 2% of the population answered about all other organizations correctly. This suggests that knowledge of NGOs is highly fragmented in Georgia.

As seen in the table above, the population has better knowledge about the status of six organizations: the Parliament of Georgia, the Labor Party; GYLA; Rustavi 2; Aldagi (an insurance company); and Transparency International – Georgia. Yet, the share of the population who named the correct status of all these organizations is only 16%. Below, this group is referred to as the “better informed population.”

Surprisingly, the better informed population does not report trusting NGOs in Georgia at a different level than people who are less informed about NGOs. These two groups differ only when it comes to the share of those answering “Don’t know”: while 5% of the better informed population responded so, 19% of the rest of the population did.

NGOs have not yet secured the population’s trust in Georgia. Still, the population reports rather positive assessments of specific aspects of NGO activities as will be discussed in the second part of this blog post next Monday.

To have a closer look at the data, visit CRRC’s Online data analysis platform.

New Georgian study offers insights on Russian disinformation

[Note: This article originally appeared in Eurasianet.]

A study recently conducted by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers-Georgia confirmed widely held beliefs that pensioners and those with low levels of education are most susceptible to media manipulation. The findings suggest that Western efforts to counter Russian disinformation should focus on those groups in Georgia.

Another major finding of the study is that a solid, growing economy is perhaps the best antidote against disinformation.

The study, which was funded by USAID, was designed to enable policymakers to gain a better understanding of who in Georgia is susceptible to believing anti-Western disinformation. During the post-Soviet era, Georgia’s steadfast efforts to move closer to Western institutions, including NATO and the EU, have been a major source of tension in its relations with Russia. The two countries fought a brief, and from Tbilisi’s standpoint, disastrous war in 2008.

The CRRC-Georgia study can, in turn, help policymakers lay the groundwork for better-targeted Western initiatives to counter Russian disinformation, with the aim of reinforcing public support for Tbilisi’s embrace of Western values and institutions. Another aim is to foster a better understanding of attitudes and trends in order to reduce the odds that any new initiatives misfire and stoke the polarization of society.

CRRC-Georgia researchers pored over demographic data and developed an algorithm to hone their ability to predict whether individuals were at risk of being influenced or not by anti-Western disinformation; whether they already held pro-Russian or isolationist views; or whether they held pro-Western views.

The results showed that 55 percent of the sample size held pro-Western views, 36 percent of the sample size was ambivalent, uncertain, or inconsistent in their views and 9 percent held pro-Russian or neutral opinions.

The only mild surprise in the ensuing analysis was that a citizen’s residence in the capital Tbilisi was “no longer a significant predictor of at-risk status.”

Age is a major factor when it comes to consuming and believing disinformation: the older an individual is, the more susceptible he or she is to fake news.

“The results suggest that while one in five 18-24-year-olds are at-risk of being influenced by anti-Western propaganda, one in three people over the age of 65 are,” according to the findings.

Ethnicity also appears to have important implications for the effectiveness of disinformation. “Slightly under one in five people in predominantly ethnic Georgian settlements are at-risk of being influenced by anti-Western propaganda, while one in three are in predominantly minority settlements,” the report stated.

Those with a secondary education or better tended to be relatively impervious to disinformation, in terms of shaping attitudes about public affairs, the findings suggested.

Of those in the sample who were found to be at risk of being influenced by disinformation, many were worried about economic developments. “The economy may be a slightly more important issue for those who are at-risk, suggesting that messaging about the economy and actual economic improvement are likely to be important for this population,” CRRC-Georgia researchers wrote.

Russia’s weaponization of information has disrupted political processes in the West in recent years, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Brexit campaign in the UK.

Policymakers in the West have only recently started to focus on crafting strategies that address Russian digital mischief-making.

The EU has invested in strategic communications aimed at countering Russian disinformation in Georgia and elsewhere. The CRRC-Georgia findings may help Western policymakers tweak initiatives so that they are more targeted, and thus, stand a better chance of achieving strategic objectives.

Efforts to counter Russian propaganda can take two broad forms – demand-side and supply-side. A supply-side strategy involves blocking disinformation at its source via the disabling of the source’s ability to distribute content. A demand-side strategy, meanwhile, aims to inoculate news consumers from the potentially pernicious effects of disinformation.

When it comes to the use of supply-side tactics, there are troubling ramifications for democratic societies that are built upon fundamental rights such as freedom of speech and access to information.

Given the supply-side dilemmas, developing demand-side initiatives that address issues relating to Russian state-sponsored disinformation would seem to offer a better, although potentially more difficult way forward.

Dustin Gilbreath is the deputy research director of CRRC-Georgia. The views expressed in this article represent the views of the author alone. The article was written within the auspices of the Russian Propaganda Barometer Project funded through the East-West Management Institute’s ACCESS program.

Georgians have more negative attitudes towards the Chinese than other foreigners in Georgia

Georgia is often famed for its hospitality. While the country is more tolerant of other ethnicities, relative to Armenia and Azerbaijan, it has also experienced a rise in nationalist rhetoric and movements in recent years. A number of incidents have also taken place, with hate crime directed towards immigrants and religious and ethnic minorities. This blog post looks at attitudes towards different migrant groups based on a survey experiment in the Caucasus Barometer 2017 survey.

On CB 2017, respondents were randomly assigned to be asked one of five questions. The basic text read, “In your opinion, will the foreigners that come to live in Georgia contribute to the economic development of Georgia or not?” In the other four questions, respondents were asked about Russians, Americans and Europeans, Chinese, and Turkish people instead of foreigners. Since each group was randomly assigned, it is possible to look at whether attitudes to any of these groups differ from foreigners in general without base lining effects (i.e. the respondent reporting their attitudes towards one group based on a comparison with the previous groups they were asked about).

Only 11% of Georgians think that the Chinese people who come to live in Georgia will contribute to the country’s economic development and 40% think they will not. In contrast, 23% think “Foreigners” without their nationality specified will contribute and 26% that they won’t. People are also relatively more negative towards Turkish people, with 32% reporting a negative attitude.

The above results suggest a relatively lower level of tolerance for Chinese and Turkish migrants relative to people from Russia and “Americans and Europeans.” The importance of tolerance aside, this matters for Georgia’s economic development. Turkey and China are important trade partners for the country, with Turkey consistently being one of the largest sources of foreign direct investment in Georgia. Looking to the future, Georgia is likely to have more economic relations with China due to its strategic position along China’s New Silk Road project. A lack of tolerance towards these groups, if anything, will work against improving economic relations.

While the pattern is clear, the sources for the particularly negative attitudes towards Chinese people is less so. Have a hunch on the cause(s)? Join the conversation on our Facebook or Twitter pages. The data used in this post is available from CRRC’s Online Data Analysis portal.

Budget priorities are similar to people's spending priorities

Georgia’s state budget amounted to GEL 12.5 billion in 2018.  The Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Affairs; Ministry of Regional Development and Infrastructure; and Ministry of Education and Science had the largest appropriations at 28.2% (GEL 3.528 billion), 14.5% (GEL 1.815 billion), and 9.5% (GEL 1.186 billion) of the budget, respectively. In the 2018 June CRRC/NDI survey, respondents were asked, “What are your top three priorities for spending, understanding it means cutting elsewhere?” Respondents were provided with a show card and allowed to name up to three answers. This blog post looks at whether responses match up with actual spending, and how priorities vary among different demographic groups.

Overall, healthcare was named most often, with 61% of the population reporting it was a priority, followed by education (55%) and pensions/social assistance (47%).  No other issues were named nearly as frequently, with support for SMEs and infrastructure being the next most commonly named issues (reported to be priorities by 12% of the public).

People’s views on budget priorities and the current state budget correspond to each other. Healthcare and pensions/social assistance (which are under the Ministry of Labor) and education had the largest share of the budget in 2018. Georgia’s population thinks that these spheres should be budget priorities.

While priorities generally match up with appropriations, who prioritizes different realms of spending? The data suggests that compared to young people (18-35) those who are over the age of 36 are more likely to name healthcare, perhaps unsurprisingly since healthcare spending generally increases with age. Women are also significantly more likely to report healthcare than men. Interestingly, ethnic minorities are less likely to name healthcare as a budget priority. These results are supported by a logistic regression analysis, which found each variable to be a significant predictor of mentioning healthcare.


About half the population (55%) report that education is one of their top three priorities. The data suggest people with tertiary education are more likely to name education as a priority for the state budget than people who have a lower level of education. Age also matters. People between the ages of 18-55 are more likely to name education as a top priority than those who are above 55. People who live in rural areas and ethnic minorities are less likely to name education as a top priority. A logistic regression analysis supports these results.


People 56 years old or more are more likely to name pensions and social assistance as a state budget priority than younger people. Compared to men, women tend to mention pensions and social assistance as a priority. People who think the economic situation is good in the country are less likely to name pensions and social assistance in their top three priorities for the budget. Interestingly, those who live in rural area are also less likely to mention pensions/social assistance as a budget priority.  These results are also supported by a logistic regression analysis.


The above data leads to two conclusions. First, the state budget largely matches up with people’s spending priorities. Second, priorities vary significantly between age groups, settlement types, sexes, and ethnicities.

To look into the data on the issue further, visit CRRC/NDI survey results and visit our Online Data Analysis portal.

Institutions need to replace personality

[This article was first published on OC-Media.]

A fair amount of scholarship indicates that (dis)trust in political institutions provides an indication of how well the institutions work. Hence, trust in political institutions is an important indicator for the functioning of a democratic government.

Following this line of logic, one would expect that trust in institutions reflects the public’s trust in who runs them. Caucasus Barometer (CB) data from 2011 to 2017 support this argument.

Overall, the data indicates that trust in political institutions has declined since 2011. None of the political institutions asked about on CB (the president, local government, executive government, parliament, and political parties) received as high a level of trust on the 2017 Caucasus Barometer as on the 2011 or 2012 waves of the survey.

While trust has declined overall, the relative levels of trust have largely been in sync with the changes of power in the country.

After Georgian Dream came to power in 2012, there was an increase in trust towards the executive government (from 39% to 48%) and parliament (from 37 to 44%), the two institutions that changed political leadership.

Trust in the president continued to decline from 58% in 2011 to 28% in 2012 and 23% in 2013. All of these surveys were done while Mikheil Saakashvili was still president.

Trust in the president grew in 2015, the first wave of CB after the 2013 presidential elections, which ended Mikheil Saakashvili’s presidency and brought Giorgi Margvelashvili to office.

Public trust in local government did not follow the same logic as executive government, parliament, and the presidency. Even though Georgian Dream won the 2014 local elections, trust in local government did not change between 2013 and 2015.

This could be due to the relatively weak public expectations of local government. Indeed, in 2013, only 4% of the public reported they had attended a local government meeting in the last year on a CRRC/TI survey. Besides low expectations, many local government officials had defected from the UNM to GD in the years since the change of power. Hence, it is not clear that the elections truly marked a change of power.

At the same time that trust in local government did not increase, trust towards executive authorities and the parliament declined as the popular glow surrounding Georgian Dream wore away. Trust towards the executive fell from 48 percent in 2012 to 26 percent in 2017. While 44 percent trusted parliament in 2012, trust fell to 22 percent in 2017. Meanwhile, trust in President Margvelashvili continued grow, which might be attributable to his de facto opposition to the ruling party, without defection to the UNM.

Trust in political parties has remained low and showed little change from year to year. It declined between 2011 and 2015, yet, trust in political parties does not appear to follow the electoral cycle as trust in institutions controlled by specific parties appears to.

Growing public mistrust toward political institutions in Georgia is a sign of weak state institutions in the country. Renewed optimism and trust in institutions appear to follow changes in political leadership, but without strong institution-building processes, optimism turns into disappointment.

While Georgian democracy has made consistent progress for the last three decades, transitioning from personality to policy driven politics remains a challenge for Georgia’s democratic consolidation.

This article was written by Kristina Vacharadze, Programs Director at CRRC-Georgia. The opinions expressed in the article do not represent the views of CRRC-Georgia or any related entity.

To explore the data further, visit our Online Data Analysis tool.

Happy holidays 2018

This year, CRRC-Georgia’s carried out a wide variety of research on Georgia as well as the South Caucasus. If you’re looking for a social science read or a new dataset to play with over the holidays, here’s a few from CRRC-Georgia from 2018.

1. Knowledge and Attitudes of the Population of Georgia towards the Judiciary

What does the public think of the judiciary? Have the reforms of the Georgian Dream government led to increased trust in the courts?  This report looks at the knowledge and attitudes of the population towards the judiciary and changes between 2014 and 2018. To read the full report (in Georgian), click here, and to read a briefer version in English, click here. To explore the data, click here.

2. Countering Violent Extremism in Georgia: A Needs Assessment

This year, CRRC-Georgia carried out a needs assessment of communities that have lost members to the conflicts in Syria and Iraq. The needs assessment asked two primary questions. 1) What distinguishes communities that have lost members to the conflict and have not that are otherwise similar? 2) What do people in communities that have lost members to the conflict want for their communities? To answer these questions, CRRC-Georgia used a matching algorithm to identify the most similar communities in the country to those that have lost members and carried out a survey in both types of communities. To see what we found, click here for the report and dataset.

3. Anti-western Propaganda Barometer

What’s the far right talking about in Georgia? LGBT people. Well, not only that, but really, they are talking a lot about LGBT people, according to the new dashboard CRRC-Georgia built in 2018 which provides weekly updates and analysis of what far right groups are talking about on Georgian language Facebook using a variety of machine learning tools. To explore the data, click here.

4. Elections, elections, elections

On Sunday December 16, Georgia’s first directly elected female president Salome Zourabouchvili was sworn into office after winning in a second round run-off. During the first round of elections, Senior Policy Analyst David Sichinava and Researcher Rati Shubladze built pollster.ge, which provided analysis similar to Nate Silver’s 538 in the lead up to the elections. One aspect of the campaign that was widely commented on was its negativity. For the second round, in an article for OC-Media, Koba Turmanidze explained the phenomenon by pointing out that it likely worked, at least for the opposition. On election night, Deputy Research Director Dustin Gilbreath gave his hot take on the elections to Euronews, and David Sichinava summed up the elections the following morning also on Euronews.

5. Citizen Participation in Policy Formulation at the Local Level

Have a decentralization wonk in your life? Well, this is the report for them. As Georgia continues towards devolving powers to local administrations, CRRC-Georgia prepared this report on citizens’ participation in local government in Georgia to help inform local government efforts to transition into a more empowered role in citizens’ lives. To read the report (in Georgian), click here.

From CRRC-Georgia, we wish you a happy holiday season, and Social Science in the South Caucasus will be back in January. To stay up to date with what’s happening at CRRC-Georgia, follow us on Facebook or sign up for our monthly newsletter Data Bites.

Georgia’s imagined tolerance

[Note: This article was originally published in collaboration with OC-Media.]

Hate crime regularly makes the news in Georgia. The recent murder of Vitali Safarov, the harassment of Jehovah’s Witnesses, which has put the country in the European Court of Human Rights, and the 2013 riots on the International Day Against Homophobia all come to mind.

Yet, Georgians also pride themselves on examples of tolerance in the country’s history. This contradiction — pride in tolerance despite an apparent lack of it in many cases — is reflected in data CRRC-Georgia recently collected for the Council of Europe.

To understand attitudes towards different minority groups, the survey asked respondents whether they would approve of someone like them doing business with 24 different minority groups. Homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and people of ethnicities not traditionally associated with Europe or the Caucasus were generally less approved of than peoples from Europe and the Caucasus.

People with disabilities were the most approved of minority group.

The groups people approve of least were also the groups the public thinks are most likely to be the victims of hate crime and the targets of hate speech.

When asked how often specific groups are the victims of hate crime and the target of hate speech, homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses topped the list.  When asked, who do you think is the target of hate speech most often in Georgia, LGBT people were named more often than any other group. The same is true of hate crime.

While these perceptions likely reflect the situation surrounding hate crime and hate speech to a reasonable degree, they are also likely mistaken to a certain extent.

For example, the vast majority of the public (91%) reports positive attitudes towards people with disabilities. In line with this pattern, only 2% of the public reported that people with disabilities are often the targets of hate speech and 2% the victims of hate crime.

Yet, as a person with a disability interviewed within the study stated, ‘Hate speech is part of our everyday life. Ingrained. Firmly established.’

It is not possible to generalise from a single interview, yet a gap between minority and majority perspectives on the challenges minorities face are not present only when it comes to people with disabilities.

The survey asked what the most significant issues a variety of groups faced were. While 41% of men reported that women faced no issues 28% of women did.  29% of ethnic Georgians reported that ethnic minorities faced no issues compared with 10% of ethnic Armenians and 12% of ethnic Azeris. 44% of Orthodox Christians reported that religious minorities faced no issues compared with 17% of Muslims and 20% of non-Orthodox Christians.

How the question was asked is important here. Respondents were provided with a list of potential responses and allowed to name other issues. However, that they face no issues was not part of that list, meaning that people actively reported the above groups face no significant issues rather than selecting one of the options from the list. If they face no issues was part of the list, a larger share of the public likely would have selected the option.

There are many plausible causes of the gap between minority and majority perceptions. A lack of contact between groups is one potential source. While this survey did not ask about contact with different minority groups, previous surveys show that those who are in touch with minorities often have more positive attitudes towards them (e.g. with LGBT people and with migrants).

A second potential cause is the portrayal of minorities in the media, which frequently contains hate speech.

No matter the precise reasons for intolerance in Georgia, these potential causes also suggest potential solutions.

First, increasing contact between minority and majority groups has the potential to decrease the animus people express towards minorities. Second, the media could remove hate speech from its discourse. Further, they could take the positive step of providing more detailed coverage of the problems minorities face in Georgia, thus directly informing the public.

Finally, highlighting the contradiction between Georgians’ pride in tolerance and the hate crime which takes place in Georgia all too often has the potential to encourage the public to question their own views.

Dustin Gilbreath is the Deputy Research Director of CRRC-Georgia. 

The views presented in this article do not necessarily represent the views of CRRC-Georgia. The views presented in this article do not represent the views of the Council of Europe or any related entity.

The data used in this article are available here.

Which questions do people tend to respond “Don’t know” to?

On surveys, sometimes the questions asked are hard for some people to answer. As a result, the answer option “Don’t know” is a regular part of any survey dataset. But are some questions particularly likely to elicit these responses? This blog post uses un-weighted 2017 CRRC Caucasus Barometer (CB) survey data for Georgia to look at this question.

The ten CB 2017 questions with the highest share of “Don’t know” answers are provided on the chart below.


Two patterns are present in the CB 2017 questions that people responded “Don’t know” to most often. First, unsurprisingly, the shares of “Don’t know” answers are higher to questions that it is reasonable to think a person would be uncertain about. Second, while only about one in five questions on the CB questionnaire aimed to measure political or economic attitudes, most of the questions in the top ten are such questions.

To have a closer look at the data used in this blog post, visit CRRC’s Online Data Analysis portal.

Pension reform is underway in Georgia, but only about half of the population is aware of it

On July 21, 2018 Georgian legislators approved an accumulative pension scheme, after years of discussion. As one of the requirements of the new law, employees with contracts who are under the age of 40 have to contribute 2% of their remuneration to the state-run pension fund, on a monthly basis. Although other employees are not legally required to do so, they may participate in the scheme voluntarily. This law is a first step in a larger reform of Georgia’s pension system. Opposition politicians have criticized the new law citing that it counters the country’s constitution as it introduces a new tax without a referendum. Several civil society groups also expressed criticism of the reform, questioning its legitimacy.

According to June 2018 CRRC/NDI survey that was conducted before the law was passed, only 46% of people in Georgia were aware of the proposed reform of the country’s pension system. People with tertiary education reported being more informed (57%) compared to the rest of the population. Although the new pension scheme primarily targets younger employees, young people were significantly less likely to have heard of the proposed changes (36%) compared to those who were older than 40 (53%). Ethnic minorities were also far less likely to know about the reform than ethnic Georgians (22% and 48%, respectively).

A majority were against the idea of mandatory contributions to the pension fund. If they had a choice of mandatory or voluntary contributions, only 17% would prefer the mandatory option, while the majority (61%) would choose the voluntarily option. Even people whose political sympathies are close to the ruling Georgian Dream party are significantly more likely to favor voluntary contributions compared to the mandatory ones.

Note: The full wording of the first question was: “There are several proposals regarding the pension reform. Which of these two proposals is acceptable for you? According to one of the proposals, employees under the age of 40 mandatorily contribute 2% of their salary to the pension fund every month. According to another proposal, employees under the age of 40 voluntarily contribute 2% of their salary to the pension fund every month.” For the question, “Which party is closest to you?” only first choice has been considered for the chart above. 

People in Georgia need to be informed better about the new pension scheme that was recently adopted. Importantly, it lacks public support even among those who feel close to the ruling party.

The data used in this blog post is available here.

Which groups in Georgia tend to support marijuana legalization more?

On July 30, 2018 the Constitutional Court of Georgia legalized the consumption of marijuana. But what was public opinion on marijuana legalization before the decision? In June 2018, CRRC-Georgia carried out a survey for NDI Georgia that asked: “In your opinion, should marijuana be legalized in Georgia or not?”

While 18% answered marijuana should be legalized, according to 74% it should not. Support for legalization was slightly higher among men, younger people (18-35), and Tbilisi residents. Attitudes did not vary by level of education.

While it is now legal to consume marijuana in Georgia, a large majority of the public was against legalization the month before it was legalized. Whether people’s attitudes have changed since or whether they will change as time goes on is, of course, the subject of future research.

To explore the data used in this blog post, visit our Online Data Analysis portal.

Views on marital (in)fidelity in Georgia

According to 86% of adults in Georgia, cheating on one’s spouse can never be justified, according to CRRC’s 2017 Caucasus Barometer (CB) survey findings. Another 12% also reported disapproving of cheating, but refrained from a radical “never” answer and choose relatively softer options. Only about 2% openly agreed, albeit with different strength of agreement, with the position that cheating on one’s spouse can be justified. While these answers are expected to be influenced by social desirability bias, they are still interesting indicators of views on marital (in)fidelity in Georgia. Importantly, the distribution of answers has been quite stable since 2011.

Based on the 10-point scale used in CB2017 to record answers to the question, “To what extent, in your opinion, can cheating on one’s spouse be justified or not?” a new binary variable was created for the analysis presented in this blog post, where those answering “Never” (code 1) are considered separately, and their answers are compared to the answers of those who chose all other codes from the show card, i.e. who consider cheating potentially justifiable although do this to varying degrees. Thus, the new variable compares those who report they would not justify cheating under any circumstances, and those who can either think of certain justification(s) for cheating or directly justify it. Answers “Don’t know” and “Refuse to answer” (less than 1% of the total) were excluded from the analysis.

Age, gender, marital status and settlement type would be expected to be crucial in exploring divisions of public opinion on this issue. Counterintuitively, though, the small differences in answers by age, gender, and marital status are all within the margin of error. On the other hand, people living in the capital, other urban settlements and rural settlements do answer this question differently. The population of Tbilisi stands out in its tolerance for cheating, with 22% reporting varying degrees of readiness to justify it.

Thus, it is not the basic demographic variables per sè that more or less divide public opinion in respect to (un)acceptance of cheating in Georgia. Living in the capital versus the rest of the country makes more of a difference. Although the majority of the population of Tbilisi reports that cheating on one’s spouse can never be justified, compared to the rest of the population of Georgia, twice as large a share of Tbilisi dwellers report at least some tolerance to marital infidelity.

To have a look at the Caucasus Barometer data, visit CRRC’s Online Data Analysis portal.

Is Georgia’s Orthodox Christian population losing (trust in) their religion?

Surveys conducted in Georgia have repeatedly shown that the Georgian Orthodox Church’s leader Patriarch Ilia II is the most trusted public figure in the country. Yet, CRRC’s Caucasus Barometer survey data from 2008 to 2017 suggests that both the share of Orthodox Christians in Georgia that trust the Church and the degree to which they trust the Church is on the decline. Although the survey does not provide direct evidence, the scandals surrounding the church in recent years could have contributed to this. For instance, in 2017, a priest was convicted of attempting to poison the Secretary of Ilia II. The government has sold land to the Church at symbolic prices on numerous occasions, often leading to negative media coverage. In 2013, priests were involved in an anti-LGBT rights riot.

CB data on Georgia’s Orthodox Christians’ trust towards the Church shows that 75% reported fully trusting it in 2008. Only 33% did in 2017. During the same period, the share of those who reported trusting the Church more moderately (‘rather trust’ responses) increased from 15% to 38%. Combining the options ‘rather trust’ and ‘fully trust’ is also telling. In 2015, a total of 82% of Orthodox Christians reported trusting the Church; 71% did in 2017, an 11 percentage point decline.

Note: Only answers of those who identified themselves as Orthodox Christians are presented in the charts in this blog post. Answer options “Don’t know” and “Refuse to answer,” which made up less than 5% of responses in any given wave of the survey, are not shown in the charts throughout this blog post.

The decline in trust in the Church between 2015 and 2017 was starkest in Tbilisi, where reported trust declined by 18 percentage points. In Tbilisi, the share of people reporting distrust increased, while outside Tbilisi it did not change beyond the margin of error.

The decline in reported trust in the Orthodox Church is not reflected in changes in some forms of religious practice. Orthodox Christians have reported fasting at similar levels since 2008. There are small fluctuations in reported attendance of religious services, but no clear trend.
 

Note: The original answer options “Always fast” and “Often fast” were combined into the category “Often or always fast” on the chart above. The answer options “Rarely fast” and “Never fast” were combined into the category “Never or rarely fast”. 

Note: The original answer options “Everyday”, “More than once a week”, “Once a week”, and “At least once a month” were combined into the category “At least once a month”. Answer options “Less often” and “Never” were combined into the category “Less often or never”. 

While Orthodox Christians in Georgia may not be losing their religion, fewer trust in its key institution - the Church.

The data used in this blog post is available here.

People’s views about who should pay for health insurance in Georgia

A previous CRRC blog post explored attitudes in Georgia towards the role of the government, and specifically, whether people think the government should act as a parent or as an employee with regards to its citizens. One very specific aspect of this issue is reflected in opinions about how much the government should be involved in coverage of health insurance expenses.

According to the findings of a survey that CRRC-Georgia carried out for Transparency International - Georgia in March, 2016, only 3% of the population reports that people should cover their and their family members’ health insurance expenses themselves, while an absolute majority (96%) says these expenses should be covered at least partly by the government. A slightly larger share of people in this group (52%) would expect the government to fully cover the population’s health insurance expenses, while according to 44%, these expenses should be covered partially by people themselves and partially by the government.

Although the two questions were asked in two different surveys, thus, direct comparison of the findings is not possible, there are demographic similarities between those who view the government as a parent and those who expect the government to fully cover the population’s health insurance expenses, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, between those who view the government as an employee and those who say that health insurance expenses should be covered partially by people themselves and partially by the government. The previous blog post highlighted that people with higher than secondary education and those residing in the capital were more likely to view the government as an employee than as a parent. Similarly, people with higher than secondary education and those living in the capital report health insurance expenses should be covered partially by people themselves and partially by the government.


Note: The answer options for the question, “What is the highest level of education you have achieved to date?” were grouped as follows: options “No primary education”, “Primary education (either complete or incomplete)”, “Incomplete secondary education”, and “Completed secondary education” were grouped into the category “Secondary or lower”. Options “Incomplete higher education”, “Completed higher education (BA, MA, or specialist degree)”, and “Post-graduate degree” were grouped into the category “Higher than secondary”.

Interestingly though, whereas the previous blog post reported that women were more likely to believe the government should act like a parent, there is virtually no difference between men’s and women’s opinions on how health insurance expenses should be covered.

To explore the data used in this blog post further, visit our Online Data Analysis platform.

Most dog owners in Tbilisi vaccinate their dogs, but few spay or neuter them

Based on the findings of a phone survey of the population of Tbilisi, conducted by CRRC-Georgia for the British charity Mayhew in November, 2017, 15% of Tbilisi households have one or more dogs at home. A majority of dog owners reported their dogs were vaccinated at the time of survey, but few spay or neuter them.

Only 5% of Tbilisi dog owners reported having never visited a veterinarian, although it should be kept in mind that the margin of error is rather high when analyzing the relatively small group. Almost all dog owners who visit veterinarians do this for the purpose of vaccination, while other reasons include hygiene and grooming, parasite control, and accident/trauma, each reported by approximately 1/5th of dog owners.

Vaccination is important to protect both dogs and humans from diseases like rabies. An absolute majority of dog owners (97%) reported they have vaccinated their dogs. However, only about one in five dog owners reported their dogs were sprayed or neutered. The following reasons for not spaying or neutering dogs were named most frequently:

• The dog owners wanted their dog(s) to have puppies;
• They were against either of these practices for ethical reasons; 
• They saw no need to spay/neuter their dog(s).

Spaying and/or neutering dogs is important not only from the point of view of controlling the dog population, but it also may reduce dogs’ risk of cancer. The findings presented in this blog post suggest there is a need to raise the awareness of Tbilisi dog owners on the importance of spaying and neutering their dogs. Importantly, when providing reasons why they did not spay or neuter their pets, dog owners did not mention that they do not trust veterinarians. This suggests that veterinarians could potentially be trusted communicators for awareness raising activities.

To explore the data in this blog post more extensively, visit CRRC’s Online Data Analysis portal.