Social participation: new perspective of measurement

The relevance of the research is determined by the importance of studying the level of social participation and measuring the number of the most active population segments, which are an important activity resource for the territory’s development. The article conceptualizes the category of “agents of social change”. The main purpose of the study is to identify this social group among the entire population of the city of Cherepovets, an industrial center of the Vologda Oblast, which is outpacing socio-economic development, seeking to diversify the economy and is in dire need of representatives of this group. We focused on the practices of social participation as one of the fundamental characteristics of the agents of social change, considered the approaches to the understanding and measurement of this category by foreign and Russian authors, the allocation of social participation among other types of participation. In addition, we named internal and external factors infl uencing social participation. The article summarizes the results of the study on the level and forms of social participation according to the European Social Survey and Russian studies. The novelty of the work lies in the application of the model of stratifi cation of society according to the criteria of attitudes and the level of development of social participation practices, as well as in the identifi cation of the social portrait characteristics of the agents of social change. The empirical part of the article contains the results of measuring the social participation practices of Cherepovets inhabitants. We interviewed 600 city residents over the age of 18, which provided the empirical basis for the study. The representativeness of the sample was ensured by quoting by sex and age in accordance with the existing structure of the city. We have identifi ed a low level of formal participation of the population in non-governmental organizations with suffi ciently developed practices of informal participation and widely used forms of informal gratuitous assistance in various areas. The article provides a social portrait of the agents of social change according to the main socio-demographic characteristics.