Ulziya Kalzhanova
The ethnodemographic differences in marital behavior: changes and attitudes
Opponent’s evaluation of the Ph.D. Thesis
The doctoral thesis by Ulziya Kalzhanova has 175 pages – the text itself covers 154 pages. The work is divided into nine
chapters, including introduction and conclusion. The thesis has a logical structure – the author is seamlessly moving
from theoretical knowledge through descriptive analysis to more advanced statistical methods. In order to identify the
content of the work better, it would be appropriate to add the object/region of the study and time to the title of the
st
thesis, i.e. Kazakhstan in the early 21 century.
The purpose of the research is “…to identify differences in marital behavior of the ethnic groups…” in today’s
Kazakhstan. Data that are used for analysis are based on a sample survey conducted by the author at the turn of 2010
and 2011. The survey was based on the investigation organized in the eighties in the USA. Due to an identical structure
of the questionnaire, the author was allowed to compare results not only between the two main ethnic groups
(Kazakh and Slavic students), but also with the American students. It is a pity that it was not given more space to this
comparison (chapter 7.4) – it would have been a very interesting probe into the thinking of people who are at
different levels, both socio-demographic and cultural-historical.
The first four chapters are a kind of introduction to the studies of this issue. There are fixed input hypothesis (where it
could be discussed whether the fourth and sixth hypotheses are not mutually exclusive). A discussion with the
literature is, according to the broad topic, relatively short, as well as the whole theoretical basis. With regard to the
character of the studied region, it is missing a reflection over the quality of data from the official statistics that are
used at the work.
Other chapters are more applied. First, the fifth chapter studied the patterns of marriage and divorce according to the
ethnic groups, based on data from official statistics. The more they seem to be strange results associated with the
divorce-marriage ratios. If marriage in Kazakhstan is defined as a union between one man and one woman, is it
possible that the index may take different values between the sexes? In one year is entering to marriage or divorcing
an equal number of men and women... In addition, the values in Tables 4 and 5 are incorrect because they say that it
is mostly up to much more divorces than marriages, which – with respect to figure 21 – is not true. Questionable are
also the values in Tables 8 and 9.
The following chapters are already interested by the results of sample survey; the investigation from the USA is
introduced first, which is taken as a standard for the author’s survey. The author divided own respondents in the
Kazakh and Slavic students. But what the author thinks of the term "Slavic student", it does not work sufficiently
clarified. In Kazakhstan, there is more than one Slavic ethnic group, as evidenced in the fifth chapter (most Russians,
Ukrainians), while on p. 57 it is written that it will be a comparison between Kazakhs and Russians. What is, finally,
included under the term "Slavic students"…? The sixth and seventh chapters are descriptive; the results of surveys are
closely described there, both verbally and by graphs. However, graphs have not a good quality; they have deformed
sides, and also it is hard to read the black font on the dark blue background. As it already was mentioned, the seventh
chapter 7.4 should be more elaborate, including statistical testing of differences between the answers of Kazakh,
Slavic and American students. This statistic testing should have been deserved for all Chapter 7, while it was
recommended in evaluation of the excerpt from a dissertation. Unfortunately, the author did not observe this
recommendation and it can be very difficult to determine if the differences between the surveyed groups are
significant or not.
The most problematic chapter seems to be – from my perspective – the eighth chapter, based on the results of factor
analysis. The methodological part of the beginning of the chapter is very successful, but subsequent analysis raises
some questions:
Based on what data it is calculated at the beginning of factor analysis in Chapter 8.1? On the basis of all data
across genders and ethnic groups? This is not mentioned anywhere, respectively the opponent did not find these
details download.
From chapter 8.2, author used variables of type "marriage", "change of spouse", "sex life", etc. These variables
are not explained, because until this chapter the author works with numbers of questionnaire items. The reader
is introduced with an explanation of these abbreviations in the Annex, but a reference to this Annex is missing in
the section 8.2. As appropriate, this information should have been supplied as the part of the table 31 on page
121. Striking, however, is why these "recoding" questionnaire items were not working throughout the work, but
only from Chapter 8.2 ...
Chapter 8.4 sets a goal to evaluate the differences between the results obtained from factor analysis. The
comparison of results is accessed so that the author took the results of the initial factor analysis, where
individual factors are named. However, for the results of further factor analysis she assumed that all first and
second factors have the same character as the initial analysis and they may be called by the same name. But
results across the factor analysis show that these factors are always saturated with different variables with
different intensity. If Factor 1, there should be called in one analysis as "Factor affecting marital satisfaction", in
the second analysis this factor cannot be called this name, because it may be saturated by other variables and
may be closer to the defined structure of another factor. Therefore, I consider that the chapter 8.4 is wrong; the
comparative analysis is made totally illogically in my opinion.
In Conclusion, the author summarizes the findings. Unfortunately, there is no link to the input hypotheses from the
introduction; there was no correct verification of these hypotheses. The whole conclusion would certainly deserve
more attention.
Although the whole work seems at first sight quite well, except the main comments that were mentioned above, you
can meet with other errors (only the most important):
It would be better to bring in the methodological part of the state formulas that were used in the analysis (e.g.
rates of the second kind used in Chapter 5).
Figures 1–5 should be expressed in relative terms to be mutually comparable; the text besides figures is not
suitable.
Values in the tables should have the same number of decimal places (e.g., Table 2).
Tables should not exceed the set page margins (e.g., Table 20).
Uppercase and lowercase letters in the table headings should be identical (e.g., Tables 23 and 24 – Rural/rural…).
The data in Tables 23 and 24 are wrong – row sum across categories of ethnicity does not give 100 % (see notes
under the tables).
Table 55 has the wrong title (consistent with table 53).
Work with citations and with writing the references is also faced with considerable problems.
The presented thesis deals with a very interesting topic and the basic idea, which is based on using the same
questionnaire on ethnic groups in Kazakhstan, is good. The failure, however, can be found mainly in the processing of
individual results – in the descriptive chapters (no statistical significance of differences in study) as well as in the
chapter with factor analysis. Although it can be assumed that the student has shown that she is able to think logically
and analytically, and that mistakes possibly rose partly from a lack of knowledge in combination with a lack of time to
study or consult some passages of the thesis. For this reason, it can be assumed that Ulziya Kalzhanova demonstrated
that she is able to write up a work of this type and therefore
I recommend to accept the submitted Ph.D. thesis for a defense.
RNDr. Luděk Šídlo, Ph.D.
Praha 2011-09-22