Strategies for Studying the Political Trust of Youth in Modern Political Science

Cover Page

Cite item

Full Text

Abstract

The article examines the main approaches to assessing and measuring political trust used by Russian and foreign scientists in conducting empirical research in 2018-2022. The authors proceed from one of the accepted in the social sciences understanding of methodology as a set of methods of used for analysis. In this regard, the purpose of the paper is to systematize methods for measuring and evaluating political trust and determining the relevance of their application in the study of youth as a specific socio-demographic group. The relevance of the study is related to the tendency of some scientists to associate the youth political trust with the character of political regime in a particular state and the potential for its transformation. The analysis of scientific literature revealed that the main methods of obtaining information on the topic of political trust are mass surveys and expert interviews. The most important component of studying this area is the comparison of the mechanisms for the formation of political attitudes of various social groups in states with different types of political regimes. The article substantiates the need to develop narrowly focused methods for studying the youth political trust, since a number of studies show the specificity of the formation and individual indicators of this setting of the political consciousness of generations Y and Z. In particular, there is a significant differentiation in the levels of institutional and personalized political trust among different subgroups of young people, a large variability of this political attitude, with a relatively low awareness of real political processes, the desire to articulate rational grounds for the formation of trust. A systematic study of these features of the youth political trust requires the use of a more complex, combining elements of quantitative and qualitative analysis tools than is currently used in empirical studies. It is necessary to develop special methods of analysis based on an integrated approach that combines mix-methods of research. The information obtained with the help of the updated methodology on the state and characteristics of the youth political trust seems to be a significant basis for the formation of strategies for the interaction of government institutions with this socio-demographic group, which is of fundamental importance for the sustainable development of modern states.

About the authors

Irina I. Andriiv

Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences; St Petersburg State University

Author for correspondence.
Email: andriiv99@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-1487-3916

Editor of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research of the Institute for Scientific Information in Social Sciences INION RAS; Master student of the Faculty of Political Science, St Petersburg State University

Moscow, Russian Federation; Saint-Petersburg, Russian Federation

Anna D. Puzanova

Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences; St Petersburg State University

Email: anna.puzanova.901@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-8027-0235

Editor of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research of the Institute for Scientific Information in Social Sciences, INION RAS; Master’s Student, Faculty of Political Science, St Petersburg State University

Moscow, Russian Federation; Saint-Petersburg, Russian Federation

References

  1. Avdeeva, D.A. (2019). Trust in Russia and its relation to the level of economic development. Social Sciences and Contemporary World, 3, 79–93. (In Russian). https://doi.org/10.31857/ S086904990005087-7
  2. Baranovskii, M.V. (2019). Modern practices of sociological study of the phenomenon of trust. Vlast, 2, 183–190. (In Russian). https://doi.org/10.31171/vlast.v27i2.6349
  3. Borisova, A.S. (2019). Determining the level of public confidence in regional authorities in the web space. Innovations and investments, (9), 285–289. (In Russian).
  4. Cherkashin, M.D. (2019). Public confidence in authorities as a factor of social consolidation of society. Communicology: electronic scientific journal, 4(3), 74–83. (In Russian).
  5. Chevalier, T. (2019). Political trust, young people and institutions in Europe. A multilevel analysis International Journal of Social Welfare, 28(4), 418–430. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijsw.12380
  6. Dalton, R.J. (2004). Democratic challenges, democratic choices. The erosion of political support in advanced industrial democracies. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
  7. Dekker, H., & Meijerink, F. (2012). Political cynicism: Conceptualization, operationalization and explanation. Politics. Culture and Society, 3, 33–48.
  8. Demidova, O.A. (2011). Modeling of public confidence in the main social and political institutions: comparative econometric analysis. Applied Econometrics, 1, 114–132. (In Russian).
  9. Desposato, S.W., Wang, G., & Wu, J.Y. (2021). The Long-Term Impact of Mobilization and Repression on Political Trust. Comparative Political Studies, 54(14), 2447–2474. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414021997171
  10. Ezhov, D.A. (2018). To the problem of formation of political values system of the Russian youth. Vlast, (8), 107–110. (In Russian). https://doi.org/10.31171/vlast.v26i8.6053
  11. Fedotova, V.A. (2022). The influence of values on the formation of political trust among modern Russian youth. International Journal of Humanities and Natural Sciences, (1–3), 53–56. (In Russian). https://doi.org/10.24412/2500-1000-2022-1-3-53-56
  12. Garcia-Albacete, G.G. (2014). Young people’s political participation in Western Europe: Continuity or generational change? New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
  13. Grishin, N.V. (2022). Modern approaches to measuring political trust: a review of Russian and foreign scientific literature. Caspian Region: Politics, Economics, Culture, 4, 75–80. (In Russian).
  14. Gulevich, O.A., & Guseva, V.V. (2022). How to measure the attitude towards politicians? Russianlanguage questionnaires for measuring political trust and political cynicism. Psychological Research, 15(83). https://doi.org/10.54359/ps.v15i83.1140. (In Russian).
  15. Inglehart, R., & Welzel, C. (2005). Modernization, cultural change, and democracy: The human development sequence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  16. Inglehart, R. (1977). The silent revolution: Changing values and political styles among western publics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  17. Kirilenko, V.P., & Alekseev, G.V. (2021). Measuring political trust in a modern democracy. Administrative consulting, 10, 22–34. (In Russian). https://doi.org/10.22394/1726-1139-2021-10-22-34
  18. Komarova, A.A. (2021). The image of an ideal politician in the minds of Russian youth. Vestnik Universiteta, (6), 166–171. (In Russian).
  19. Malkina, M.Y., Ovchinnikov, V.N., & Kholodilin, K.A. (2020). Institutional factors of political trust in modern Russia. Journal of Institutional Studies, 12(4), 77–93. (In Russian). https://doi.org/10.17835/2076-6297.2020.12.4.077-093
  20. Nikiforov, Y.A. (2018). Trust to the authorities in the regional context: Sociological measurement. Izv. Saratov Univ. (N. S.), Ser. Sociology. Politology, 18(2), 120–123. (In Russian). https://doi.org/10.18500/1818-9601-2018-18-2-120-123
  21. Norris, P. (2011). Democratic deficit: Critical citizens revisited. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  22. Popova, O.V., & Lagutin, O.V. (2019). Political sentiments of youth: loyalty or protest? RUDN Journal of Political Science, 21(4) 599–619. (In Russian). https://doi.org/10.22363/2313-1438-2019-21-4-599-619
  23. Reutov, V.E., Kravchenko, L.A. & Gindes, E.G. (2019). Trust as an institutional factor of the quality of state management of the economy. Scientific Notes of the Crimean Engineering Pedagogical University, 2, 191–196. (In Russian).
  24. Rozhkova, L.V., Vlazneva, S.A., Salnikova, O.V., & Dubina, A.Sh. (2022). Youth’s attitude towards political institutions: level of trust and approval. University proceedings. Volga region. Social sciences, 1,5–17. (In Russ.). https://doi.org/10.21685/2072-3016-2022-1-1
  25. Samsonova, T.N., & Naumova, E.S. (2020). The role of mass media in the political socialization of modern Russian youth. Moscow State University Bulletin. Series 18. Sociology and Political Science, 26(1), 166–187. (In Russian). https://doi.org/10.24290/1029-3736-2020-26-1-166-187
  26. Schwartz, S.H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theory and empirical tests in 20 countries. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (pp. 1–65). Vol. 25. New York: Academic Press.
  27. Terin, D.F. (2018). The structure of political trust in Russia: performance and fairness of political institution. Sociological Journal, 2, 90–109. (In Russian). https://doi.org/0.19181/ socjour.2018.24.2.5846
  28. Uslaner, E.M. (Ed.). (2018). The Oxford Handbook of Social and Political Trust. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Copyright (c) 2023 Andriiv I.I., Puzanova A.D.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

This website uses cookies

You consent to our cookies if you continue to use our website.

About Cookies