Since 1990, the STEM Institute for Empirical Research has tracked and evaluated the trends and attitudes shaping Czech society.

This study has shown that in the Czech Republic the simple model of a society divided into two groups does not hold. In Czech society, there are not two immutable, separate groups that would oppose one across a number of social cleavages. Instead, there is a risk of fragmentation into many disparate groups that do not trust nor understand one another, which results in an overall paralysis and inability to act. Diversity of opinions is important, but consensus and compromise are needed for transforming a conversation into policy decisions.

“There is a consensus among the public that climate change is happening and that we should not delay in addressing it. The very process of transformation to low-carbon energy is rather worrying. People are afraid of getting poorer and of the social consequences.” This quote is an apt summary of an extensive research into perceptions of climate change in the Czech society. The main outputs of this research were an analytical report and a practical handbook for conducting social dialogue on the topic of climate change in the Czech Republic.

For the 2023 presidential elections, STEM constructed three election models and, in cooperation with the STEM/MARK agency, made early results predictions in both rounds based on the continuous counting of votes. We made some of the most accurate predictions of the results on CNN Prima News merely some 30-40 minutes after the closure of polling stations.

STEM Institute for Empirical Research and PAQ Research, on assignment from the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports, investigated the reasons behind the unusually high proportion of Roma pupils studying in Czech special schools. This research evaluated the success of desegregation measures implemented in response to the groundbreaking judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of D.H. and others versus the Czech Republic.

In cooperation with partners from DATLAB, STEM researchers created an interactive web application that allows visitors to peruse municipality-level quality of life data in the Czech Republic. The database makes it possible, for example, to compare expenditures from municipal budgets per capita between different municipalities, access the out/in-migration numbers for a given municipality or view the estimated distance to the closest ATM. The database contains many dozens of variables sorted into 11 main categories (eg. Demographics, Employment and Work, Environment, and others). Based on the database, we developed a typology of municipalities in the Czech Republic, which can be viewed in an interactive map.

In cooperation with KPMG Czech Republic, STEM implements long-term tracking of the financial and economic situation of Czech households. In mid-2022, we detected a dramatic deterioration in the subjectively perceived financial health of Czech households when the index fell to its lowest value since 2014. The complicated situation of Czech households at a time of the energy crisis and record inflation is underlined by the fact that, when compared to 2021, this was the sharpest year-on-year decline in the index since 1993.