Report on the research work “Belarusans' ideas of human rights and rights defense activities”

07.11.2012
Aksana Shelest, Andrei Yahorau

The study was conducted by the Centre for European Transformation on the initiative of Belarusan human rights organizations in April-June 2012. In accordance with the terms of reference, the purpose of the study was to identify concepts that exist in the Belarusan society regarding the relationship between the man and the state, human rights and their defence.

Focus-group interviews that allow revealing not only views and opinions of people, but also the grounds on which they are built, were chosen as the research method.

The main hypothesis was that concepts and attitudes Belarusans have with regards to questions of our interest do differ depending on how their social group is related to the state system. Proceeding from this, we chose four social groups, from which focus groups participants were recruited, namely:

  1. students;
  2. public sector workers;
  3. businesspeople;
  4. government officials.

Additional tasks were: balanced composition of focus groups as per main socio-demographic characteristics (age and gender), and possibility of analysis as per "centre-provinces" parameter.

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