Perceptions of social climate in the baltic countries: Methodological and comparative issues

Social climate is a relatively new concept measuring people’s wellbeing (Duguleană and Duguleană 2015), operationalized by perceptions of people’s conditions of living. It has been used in the Eurobarometer surveys since 2009 but still gained little attention in academic research. In this paper, issues in constructing an index of social climate are being discussed. As the rates of meaningful responses to questions on different aspects of the social climate vary greatly, the author proposes a revisited version of the social climate index as well as assesses its internal consistency and usability. The article presents the results of the regression analysis on the impact of factors related to the social climate across the three Baltic countries. The findings suggest that the political competence, the type of community, and the employment status account for most differences in social climate perceptions.