Psychological Characteristics of Activity, Traditional Values and Safety Values of University Youth in the Context of Innovativeness

Abstract

Exploring value orientations and psychological characteristics of activity in students in the context of their innovativeness is relevant in connection with the society's social demands and the specifics of personal and professional development of this category of young people. Such a study is significant, since it is students who are potential and active subjects of various social transformations, the most intellectually advanced and creative part of youth. The study focused on correlation and regression analyses of value orientations and psychological characteristics of activity among university students in Tomsk (N = 419). In the study the following research instruments were used: Sh. Schwartz's Portrait Values Questionnaire-Revised (modified by K.V. Sugonyaev); R. Inglehart's World Values Survey (adapted by R.K. Khabibulin); N.M. Lebedeva and A.N. Tatarko's Self-Assessment of Personality's Innovative Qualities; E.Yu. Mandrikova's Self-Organization of Activity Questionnaire; the Differential Test of Reflexivity (D.A. Leontiev); the Satisfaction with Life Scale (E. Diener; adapted by D.A. Leontiev and E.N. Osin); the Index of Personal Readiness for Activity (S.A. Bogomaz, I.V. Atamanova); the Change Response Styles Questionnaire (T.Yu. Bazarov, M.P. Sycheva); the Academic Motivation Scales questionnaire (T.O. Gordeeva, O.A. Sychev and E.N. Osin, based on the R. Vallerand Academic Motivation Scale). Regression analysis has shown that the leading psychological characteristics of activity in university youth in the context of innovativeness are “Index of innovativeness”, “Index of personal readiness for activity” and “Implementing style of responding to changes”. The regression analysis results indicate that the innovative style of responding to changes is not preferable among students when assessing their innovativeness. The study conducted revealed the ambivalence of the relationship between university youth's traditional values, safety values and their psychological characteristics of activity. This fact may indicate that current societal transformations inevitably affect personality characteristics of young people, showing that values ensuring the society's stability and security, the absence of chaos are important for them, as well as the significance of development, expansion of opportunities for self-realization, socio-cultural transformations. The study findings show the need for taking into account the degree of manifestation of psychological parameters in question and their ratio in students to ensure their personal and socio-cultural development. Investigating students' psychological characteristics can be used as guidelines for developing various programs of psychological and pedagogical support for their personal and professional development during their studies at university, searching for models of training specialists that meet the current requirements.