In Ukraine, a unique project National rating of influence "Elite of Ukraine" was launched, which was founded by the International expert club and rating agency "ElitExpert". According to the organizers of the project, the main goal of the rating is to form a new approach to the evaluation of the elite of society.
Potential nominees of the rating were very interested in the evaluation method, which experts will use to determine the elite of Ukraine. After all, the project proposed a new methodology that differs from the usual methods of evaluation in similar projects.
Elena Knyazeva, a sociologist and a member of the organizing committee of the National rating of influence "Elite of Ukraine", told in more detail about this.
"Special attention was paid to the research methodology, while the experience of previous projects was taken into account. For this purpose, a working expert group was created, which included specialists from various industries — political scientists, sociologists, economists, and mass media representatives. This technique was developed by specialists collectively and has already been tested. The main task of the researchers was to create a toolkit that would make it possible to obtain the most objective assessments. We understand that experts are also people, they are involved in the social and political process, and when assessing one or another nominee, each expert will have his own subjective assessment. In order to make the evaluation process as objective as possible, we have developed a 100-point scale that will allow us to record the maximum differences and dispersion in the evaluations of experts, so as not to create a situation when the same nominees scored the same number of points.
Also, the expert working group developed 10 criteria, based on which evaluations will be made on a 100-point scale. Let's make a reservation right away that the concept of "elite" today has different meanings, it is not a completely transparent term and it is quite speculative. There are many concepts and explanations of what the elite is, how to define and measure it. There is an opinion that there is no elite in Ukrainian society - there is a so-called quasi-elite. Such a view is due to the fact that in Ukraine, as well as in many post-Soviet countries, mechanisms of negative selection have been operating for a long time, those who can be called "elitists" have been pushed out of social institutions, this is the "elite on the contrary". In addition, the rating of the elite is a rather bold attempt to distinguish the elite in various public areas, and no matter how hard you try, there will be critics who will question the established hierarchy. Given these circumstances, experts will assess the importance and influence of nominees according to 10 criteria, namely: public recognition and trust; official status, career growth, success, personal achievements and sources of influence; competence and professionalism; mind, intellect, education, literacy and intelligence; financial independence; charity, patronage, volunteering; patriotism; high moral qualities; social responsibility (service to people and society), reputational integrity; the ability to achieve set goals, independence in decision-making.
Each expert will receive an instruction that clearly describes the evaluation method. 20 experts will be assigned to each region. The total number of points of each nominee will be estimated from the total number of expert ratings. That is, we decided to move away from traditional average scores and coefficients in order to get the most objective result," said Elena Knyazeva.
