Student youth expectations and concerns: sociological evaluation in the cross-cultural context

The authors accept the necessity and validity of the outlined in the article and generally accepted methodological decisions in the analysis of the youth situation in the labor market and the process of professional development of young people as determined by a set of objective and subjective factors. However, they believe it is important to supplement such data by evaluation of the expectations and concerns of students in the professional sphere for many problems in the labor market are brought about by the mismatch of realities and expectations of young professionals and their concerns regarding employment and career. Before considering such expectations and concerns, the authors developed a questionnaire to assess the general level of anxiety of the youth so that to interpret correctly the future survey data focused on professional hopes and fears. The article presents the results of the comparative analysis of anxiety levels among Russian and Chinese students obtained in the surveys of the relevant samples in Moscow and Beijing. In particular, the authors registered a higher level of anxiety and at the same time of optimism and fatalism among Chinese youth, but such an ambivalence is quite ‘normal’ and is typical for Russian students as well although on other grounds.

value orientations, fears, level of anxiety, concerns and expectations in the professional sphere, students, youth, survey questionnaire, comparative analysis of youth self-consciousness ambivalence