Value orientations of the student youth in religious and secular universities

Abstract

The article presents the results of the factor analysis applied to the data of mass survey on the value orientations of the students of secular and religious universities — Moscow Orthodox Theological Academy and Seminary, Lomonosov Moscow State University and Saint Petersburg State University. First, the authors provide a brief overview of the current state of sociological studies of values and value orientations of the youth and Russians with an emphasis on cross-cultural and other comparative contexts, which are so popular today. The article also considers different emphases in the sociological interpretation of the concepts of values and value orientations of the theoretical and empirical levels including the historical perspective. Since the research project consisted of several stages so as to solve a number of tasks and used different formats of thequestionnaire for different samples (administration, professors and students), the article presents only a small part of the project designed to reveal the value orientations of students of secular and religious universities with the help of S. Schwartz and B. Bilski technique. The authors used this technique to identify similarities and differences in values and motives of students of secular and religious universities; suggest four factorial types of motivation; offer an interpretation of the observed factors and their manifestations in different student subsamples, such as the different circumstances of life of students in secular and religious universities and the more “expert” status of the latter in the (Christian, Orthodox) moral discourse, unlike the majority of students of secular universities, who can hardly be considered experts in secular ethics.