Dynamics Of Political Preferences Of Youth In Kurgan Region Based On NBICS-Convergence

Abstract

The paper (based on NBICS-convergence) considers the dynamics of political preferences of student youth of Kurgan region based on the results of two sociological surveys (2014 and 2019). While being the most dynamic group, young people directly influence the formation of the political situation in the country, determining its future. This underlines the relevance of this problem in sociology and psychology. Nine questions with nominal responses coincided in two studies, which made it possible to compare the groups by the same answers, but representing different years. Multiple comparison in a sociological or psychological study arises at the intersection of two types of sociological questionnaire variables, when nominal variables considered as external criteria with respect to multiple comparison are used to form the groups for multiple comparison. In the future, these groups are compared according to the interval indicators of the questionnaire. The comparison of 178 nominal groups according to the results of two studies was carried out according to 21 interval variables. The individual results of solving the problem using the author’s multiple comparison (generalized version) are given and described in the paper. The results for three interval variables are considered: “Interest in politics’ (groups within two questions with nominal responses); “Satisfaction with the voting results in the presidential elections of the Russian Federation” and “Satisfaction with the work of the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin” (groups within the framework of four questions with nominal responses).

Keywords: political preferences, interest in politics, attitudes towards elections, student youth, attitudes towards politicians, multiple comparison

Introduction

The study of political preferences of young people is an urgent task of modern sociology and psychology, since young people directly affect the formation of the political situation in the country. At the same time, young people are one of the most socially mobile and dynamic groups and their study allow building certain forecasts for the future.

In recent years, sociology and psychology have studied the peculiarities of political mentality (Erdineeva, 2014), political attitudes among students of various denominational affiliation (Gorbunova, 2014), political values and motivation of students (Morozova, 2019), level of socio-political activity (Kruzhkova, Vorobyeva, Krivoshchekovova, 2019), political sentiments (Popova, Lagutin, 2019), transformation of political attitudes and value orientations of the youth (Safonova, Obukhova, Tanova, 2019).

Problem Statement

While politics is not a priority for today’s youth interests, young learners are interested in political events. Currently, the interest in political events is mainly related to the receipt of information from official sources. In recent years, compared to the beginning of 2014, the real participation of young people in political actions has been sharply falling, and political and civic activity is not a priority interest of the younger generation (Chuev, Timokhovich and Grishaeva, 2017). Therefore, it is interesting to conduct a deeper (not only the percentage of nominal responses) comparative analysis of the survey of student youth with a shift of 5 years, which shows the dynamics of political views and preferences of the younger generation.

Research Questions

A comparative analysis of data from pre-crisis (beginning of 2014, 190 respondents) and modern (beginning of 2019, 120 respondents) periods was carried out based on data from two sociological studies of student youth in Kurgan (with samples built according to generally accepted rules of sociology). The results were analyzed in terms of transformations of political preferences of young people, both between interval and nominal data, which are meaningfully coinciding in two sociological studies. If one of the previous papers analyzed the percentage dynamics based on the results of choosing nominal responses in questions with a large number of them. Then, interval results on other questions are now compared among themselves in the general task of multiple comparison, characterizing all groups that are sufficiently representative to solve the problem on nominal responses, representing respondents from both 2014 and 2019.

The two studies coincided with nine nominal responses that are of greatest interest for the multiple comparison demonstrating the dynamics (2014 and 2019) of political preferences of the younger generation. Here are some results of multiple comparison of content-matched nominal groups of respondents representing 2014 and 2019 surveys.

Purpose of the Study

The analytical study sets the purpose to conduct two surveys of student youth to make multiple comparison of interval results. Sociological studies were carried out before the international crises around Russia (early 2014) and five years later (early 2019). This demonstrates the transformation of the political views of the younger generation in a rather difficult period of international relations for Russia. This also continues and deepens the analysis of previously presented results in the form of percentages for nominal responses. This paper provides a comparative analysis of interval data of political orientation, when the nominal groups formed not only from nominal responses, but also from two different years of surveys are compared.

Research Methods

Multiple comparison (based on NBICS-convergence) tasks in a sociological or psychological study arise primarily at the junction of two types of sociological questionnaire variables (psychological study data), when nominal variables considered as external criteria with respect to multiple comparison are used to form groups for multiple comparison. Interval variables, like the internal characteristics of the formed groups, are the subject of multiple comparison of these groups. The multiple comparison method was originally a structural component of our statistical approach developed to construct empirical psychological typologies with external criteria (monograph of Basimov M.M. “Multiple comparison in sociological studies”).

To solve the problem, a generalized version of a multiple comparison was used, when after the procedure of standardizing each interval parameter for the entire set of data considered in the problem, all values of the relations “interval parameter X(i) for the nominal group G(j)” are compared with each other using a Student statistical criterion. In total, m*k values for m indicators and k groups are compared, a relative weight matrix is built, after which subsets of the same indicators or groups are selected from it for further verbal description of the results.

Findings

The results of multiple comparison within the interval scales of sociological questionnaires appear to be particularly interesting when the nominal response groups presented by the respondents of two compared years are considered within a single task of multiple comparison (Kurgan, 2014 and 2019). Thus, the nominal response groups of 2014 and 2019 are compared simultaneously and comparable results are obtained in a single system of measuring relative weights. So, of were compared. For example, let us consider individual parts from a structural (sample of groups belonging to the same question with nominal responses) distribution of groups within three interval parameters.

For the interval variable “Interest in politics” two sets (by questions) of nominal groups are discussed below; for the interval variable “Satisfaction with the voting results in the presidential elections of the Russian Federation” – four sets of nominal groups; for the interval variable “Satisfaction with the work of the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin” – four sets of nominal groups. The tables show only pronounced results with a relative weight by more than 1500 (determined by the dimension of the problem).

Conclusion

Thus, 2014 is characterized by a significant stronger differentiation of groups within interval variables, in 2019, due to the sharp decline in political activity of young people, their interest in politics, the respondents became inclined to increasingly neutral estimates of the phenomena of political life of society, political figures, parties, etc.

This was shown by the example of 3 interval variables:

1. “Interest in politics”. Groups on 2 questions with nominal responses.

2. “Satisfaction with the voting results in the presidential election”. Groups on 4 questions with nominal responses.

3. “Satisfaction with the work of the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin”. Groups on 4 questions with nominal responses.

Further work on the application of author’s methods (Basimov, 2016; 2018) continued for the data reviewed above as part of individual studies by year. The tasks were solved on the basis of the author’s method of multiple comparison by studying the connections between interval variables, which once again confirm the need to study, first of all, the simplest non-linear connections in sociology and psychology, including in the study of the political preferences of young people. The conversation about traditional mistakes arising due to the “new” rules of statistics was raised by the author and his like-minded people at the main sociological ESAs (Kornienko, 2017), ISAs and psychological ECPs, IPCs (Basimova, 2016; Ilinyh, 2012; Padurina, 2012) congresses, as well as in numerous articles.

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