The online survey “Your View on 2014” shows a year of sharp contrasts: while most respondents rate their personal health positively (66.9%), finances and quality of life move into a zone of dissatisfaction. A total of 50.4% view their material situation as negative or very negative, while only 21.6% assess it positively. The pattern is similar for quality of life: negative ratings (negative + very negative) reach 42.5%, while positive ratings remain at 20.1%.
Work leaves the strongest impression: for 43.2%, work/business was negative (including 28.1% “very negative”), while a third say it was “neither good nor bad” (33.1%). The emotional sphere is the most divided: almost half rate their love life positively (48.2%), but the share of those dissatisfied is also high (34.5%), pointing to a “year of amplitudes”—for some a personal upswing, for others a personal downturn.
When asked about the “event of the year,” answers spill between the private and the social—from the birth of a child and weddings to the May floods and political upheavals. There is no consensus on the “personality of the year” either—names mentioned include Novak Đoković, Aleksandar Vučić, Vladimir Putin, Vojislav Šešelj, as well as satirist Zoran Kesić—while “no one” is also a frequent answer.
Despite fairly solid personal optimism, views of 2015 are twofold: 59.7% expect progress on a personal level and 59.0% on a family level, but pessimism dominates when it comes to the country—57.6% predict decline or major decline. In this atmosphere, rationality also dominates job preferences: as many as 63.3% would choose a secure job with a lower salary rather than an insecure job with a higher one.
Methodological note: the survey was conducted online on a self-selected sample (138 respondents), so the findings are not representative of Serbia’s population; they primarily reflect the views of a more active segment of the internet audience at the end of 2014.