Interview of the Director of CSPS SAS for the weekly Téma magazine (47/2022)

On November 9, 2022, the staff of the Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences met with the International Evaluation Panel (IEP) at the Small Congress Centre SAS. The panel was chaired by prof. Wim van den Doel (Leiden University). Other panel members were prof. Balázs Kiss (Hungarian Academy of Sciences), prof. Özen Nergis Dolcerocca (Bologna University), prof. Markéta Křížová (Charles University in Prague) and prof. Ortwin de Graef (Leuven University).

The Czech ESS team from the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic organized the international conference "ESS Visegrad Network+ Conference" on October 13-14, 2022. Presenters from Estonia, USA, Ireland, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic met at the conference and 12 lectures were given in four conference blocks. Attention was paid to new data from the 10th ESS round, but also to selected topics from previous ESS rounds. Denisa Fedáková, coordinator of ESS in Slovakia, also participated in the conference, with a contribution on the topic of job satisfaction and social relations at work. The conference created a great forum for discussion and establishing cooperation.

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected the level of stress and anxiety in the parents. The mental health of the parents was also affected by their income and socio-economic status. These findings were included in the latest study of scientists from the SAS and the Institute of Psychology of the University of Prešov, who monitored changes in the parents´ mental health during the year and a half of the pandemic.
Due to the nature of the anti-pandemic measures that Slovakia has been following since March 2020, parents have become among the most vulnerable groups. They were exposed to concerns about the health of their children, problems related to distance education and working from home, or risks associated with declining or losing income. A research team from the Institute of Social Sciences of the Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences SAS (SvÚ CSPV SAV, v. v. i.) was interested in the extent to which the mentioned factors were reflected in the mental health of parents in Slovakia.