Saint-Petersburg State University opened Resource Center for Sociological and Internet Research in March 2013. The Center for Sociological and Internet Research was renamed into the Center for Applied Sociology in March 2023.

The mission of the Center is:

• sociological research focused on the study of public opinion on a wide range of issues;
• sociological research of social interactions and processes on the Internet;
• methodological and technical support of the software and hardware application in sociological research.

Methods of data collection:

• A telephone interview with automatic dials and the use of an online self-administered questionnaire to provide faster data collection, elimination of possible mistakes by interviewers and control sample of respondents.
• An online survey based on self-administered web-questionnaire allowing to check for mutually exclusive responses at the time of filling in and to control sample of respondents according to specified attributes.
• Automated collection of network data and content from public Internet-services including online social network sites (VK, Odnoklassniki, etc.).
• Personal structured (semi-structured) interviewing with respondents (experts).
• Focus-group interviewing with respondents (experts) in mode of a video-conference.

Methods of data analysis:

• Statistical data analysis using SPSS and R software.
• Social network analysis with Gephi, NodeXL, R, etc. software.
• «Big Data» analysis applying Tableau multi-functional complex.

Hardware and software:

• CAWI (Computer Assisted Web Interviewing) — technology allowing to conduct interviews on the Internet.
• CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing) — computer system for telephone interviewing.
• A focus-group studio equipped with stationary redundant audio- and video hardware, a TV screen, one-way Gesell mirror that separates the meeting room from the observation room.
• ABBYY FlexiCapture — equipment and software for in-line (sequence flow) scanning and text recognition and further automated data input in a database.
• Tableau — analytical software for «big data» analysis allowing to create interactive dashboards, interactive maps, interactive analytical reports, to analyze media (online social networks, blogosphere, news feeds, etc.), to connect to a number of data sources (Excel, Access, Text File, Google Analylics, Google BigQuery, Hortonworks Hadoop Hive, HP Vertica, etc.), to perform a comprehensive comparative analysis. Built-in security system guarantees that only authorized personnel gain access to sensitive data. The flexible features of Tableau configure the system for simultaneous operations of a research team and provide easy access to results. Tableau provides an opportunity to work with the data remotely.

The Center main services:

• telephone interviewing;
• online survey;
• focus-group interviewing;
• structured and semi-structured expert interviewing;
• in-depth expert interviewing;
• data collection and analysis of online social network services (VK, Odnoklassniki)
• software development for specific research goals;
• software development for interactive data visualization;
• development of a personal Internet accounts for topical online questionnaires and other web-services;
• methodological support of research and tools development;
• converting databases from an Excel to SPSS format;
• research and methodological consulting;
• statistical analysis of sociological data;
• development of a machine-readable form of a questionnaire from a customer’s questionnaire for an automatic data input;
• input of the survey data with the help of automatic sequences-flow scanner;

Resource Center for Applied Sociology fairly provides opportunity for St. Petersburg State University personnel and prospective partners to use expensive analytical software in order to foster academic research, educational process, and to facilitate the commercialization of research activities.

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