Sociological approaches to assessing and diagnosing human potential in the region

The article substantiates the position that the qualitative characteristics of the region's social development is the development and reproduction of its human potential. Qualitative changes and transformations in the socio-economic, demographic and socio-cultural development of a region can be adequately and fully recorded, described, and predicted using sociological approaches, methods, and tools. The complex analysis of objective and subjective indicators of social development of a region carried out by means of sociological science helps calculation and interpret the subjective (sociological) index of human development. Based on the results of regional sociological studies “Human development in the Republic of Bashkortostan” (2007/2008 and 2018) and “Strategy for socio-economic development of Belarus until 2030” (2015), as well as data of a Complex observation of living conditions carried out by Rosstat (2016) and the Russian monitoring study of the economic situation and health of the population carried out by the Higher School of Economics, (2016), a method for calculating the regional subjective (sociological) index of human development is proposed. The sociological content of the “traditional” human development index with the subjective index of human development significantly expands the research tools and solves the problems of developing new sociological indicators that complement and develop the prospects for the study, analysis and diagnosis of human potential in the region.