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The aim of this article is to explore the various ways in which people represent social groups. The author shows that a prominent role in such processes is played by psychological essentialism. People represent some of their social identities as inherent qualities that are based on the sharing of a presumed 'essence': something unobservable, diffi cult to remove, irreversible, and causally responsible for overt behaviours. Empirical evidence suggests that no particular causal process of essence acquisition is constitutive for essentialism in folk models of society. Some authors believe that folk essentialism is necessarily connected with the presumed innateness of an essence (its biological transmission across generations). Innate potential and biological inheritance, however powerful they may be for the human cognitive mind in the domain of folk models for biology, are far from necessary in essentialist folksociological classifications. Essentialism in folk sociology is not defined by any particular causal process of essence acquisition. Even when it is possible to detect that a given group of people claim the innate essence of a particular folk sociology, it is always necessary to look for other features of essentialism (inherence, sharp boundaries, the immutability of identity, etc.). The article reviews some influential cognitive proposals concerning folk models of society (Astuti, Gil-White, Hirschfeld) and ethnicity, and provides arguments and empirical evidence collected in Western Ukraine in support of the claim that presumed innateness is not the constitutive part of folk models of society, let alone of psychological essentialism.

The survey Values and Society During the Covid-19 Pandemic (HODYSE 2020) was designed and conducted by researchers at the Institute for Sociology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences to obtain up-to-date data on public opinion in six thematic areas: social trust, politics and democracy, conspiracy theories, vaccination, environment and leisure.
The year 2020 was a year of significant socio-political changes. Since the beginning of the year, the most important topic in the public debate and in the media has been the global pandemic of COVID-19 disease. The pandemic became a central issue of both the ending and the new government after the parliamentary elections in February 2020.
Findings from opinion polls have allowed us to capture how a pandemic has changed the traditional view of values, and how traditionally examined values have taken on new meanings. The data also document the severity of the pandemic situation during which the research was conducted (November 2020). In this context, the topics that resonated most in the public debate on COVID-19 were addressed - questions about vaccination, health concerns and the economic situation of respondents, or compliance with the measures.

Currently, research, development and innovation is one of five areas that form the basis of the strategy Europe 2020. One of the basic indicators of evaluation of the R&D level in country is an indicator reflecting the share of gross domestic expenditure on R&D in the country's GDP. This indicator is used to monitor the achievement of the objective of the strategy, which is the EU to increase spending on R&D in 2020 to 3% of GDP. Therefore, the article deals with the issue of R&D in selected countries formulated in the strategy Europe 2020 in terms of the amount of expenditure incurred the above activities, the structure of expenditure to the GDP of countries and other partial indicators, which indicate differences in the R&D areas between analyzed and compared countries. Part of the contribution will predict the expected development of the indicator expressing the share of expenditure on R&D in GDP of countries in order to determine whether the targets set for each country are achievable by 2020.

Numerous studies have confi rmed that caring for small children is still the domain of women in Slovakia. Maternity as such is considered the natural and expected role of women and is part of the construction of femininity in Slovak society. At the same time, it is expected and routine that Slovak women participate in the labour market, and the prevailing form of employment is full-time work. This complicates efforts to harmonise work with the need to care for a small child. It is not just the country's legislative and institutional framework that shape notions about caring for small children; they are also influenced by the views and attitudes of society towards this issue. The image of a good mother is constructed, and women then try to approximate it when performing their maternal role. The prevailing ideal is of a mother who devotes herself full-time to caring for a child for the first three years of the child's life. The author of this article focuses on the context surrounding the construction of the image of a good mother as one who cares for her child until the age of three, and examines how the image of the good mother is reflected in the opinions of women on returning to work and on work/life balance. The data in this analysis are drawn from public opinion polls about early childcare and the reality of caring for small children in Slovakia and from in-depth interviews with mothers of small children. The mothers are aware of the views of society, refl ect on them, and many try to fulfil them so that they are perceived as 'good' and not 'inadequate' mothers.