Sociological monitoring: experience and practice of the institute of sociology of the national academy of sciences of belarus

The authors describe and analyze the experience of monitoring research having been conducted by Institute of Sociology of National Academy of Sciences of Belarus over the past 17 years. Theystate the main features of monitoring as a type of sociological research and under this general point of view analyze the monitoring of the Institute. The researchers specify goals and objectives of the monitoring study, list the procedures included in it and the corresponding functions. The scientific and theoretical base on which the research is conducted is described in the article, in particular, the authors characterize the scientific schools and directions created at the Institute. The paper sets out the methodological principles that form the basis of this monitoring study. The article describes instrumentarium, the groups of studied indicators in the form of blocks of questions indicating the frequency of inclusion of these blocks in the questionnaire. The authors note that the questionnaire also includes one-time questions in accordance with the problems of interest at the moment. They present the procedure of sample design developed at the Institute in detail. The procedure uses the concept of the so-called zone. This concept refers to settlementsofa lower administrative level than district centers and includes both the location of the settlement relative to the district center (distance, transport accessibility), and certain socio-economic characteristics of the settlement, which allow more accurately stratify settlements. In particular, the zone is included in the number of quotas. The authors point out features of mathematical analysis of the data, the development of the original mathematical software providing an increase in both the efficiencyof data analysis and its methodological level. Using a specific example the studyshows the advantages of monitoring as a means of studying social problems. On the basis of the analysis the authors make conclusions regarding the research tasks that can be solved by this monitoring study.