SOCIAL SPHERE: VECTORS OF CHANGE, RISKS,AND ADAPTATION RESOURCES (the results of all-Russian monitoring surveys)

The content of the concept ‘social risks’ has become a scientific problem for all areas of knowledge and social practices related to the study of uncertainty and its undesirable consequences. The author relies on the approach, according to which social risks should be interpreted as developing and manifesting themselves in the social sphere. The article analyzes the data of monitoring surveys of the Russian population conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences with the financial support of the Russian Science Foundation for the project “The dynamics of social transformation in contemporary Russia in the social-economic, political, social-cultural and ethno-religious contexts”. The article shows the dynamics of some indicators of the changes in the social sphere: in addition to standard socialdemographic indicators, the author considers individual-personal ones such as emotional-psychological condition, assessment of the situation in the country, level of trust, confidence in the future, social orientations and preferences, satisfaction with different aspects of life. Based on the results of the analysis, the author makes conclusions of the theoretical and methodological character. For instance, the target-group analysis proved to be a method that expands boundaries and possibilities of interpreting data of the monitoring “contextual” opinion polls. Selection of subgroups of respondents according to the researcher interest allows to identify specific features within the general trends. The article shows that the group with negative assessments of social situation possesses the smallest resources to confront social risks and threats in all spheres of society. The estimates of the situation in the social sphere are determined not so much by socialdemographic characteristics or the level and quality of life as by individual and world-view peculiarities, especially by the perception of the state as the main adaptation resource.