Undergraduate students’ value orientations: gender characteristics

Introduction. Value orientations of modern youth determine various key aspects of their lives: their life goals, actions and behaviors, further professional development, as well as strategies they use to achieve their goals, and social norms they follow. The aim of this research is to identify the characteristics of undergraduate students’ value orientations in accordance with their social gender. Materials and Methods. For this study, the authors used express research methods to explore students’ social values and reveal their personal, professional, social and psychological orientations and preferences. The study was conducted at Kurgan State University (Kurgan, The Russian Federation). The sample consisted of 293 undergraduate students. Results. The findings confirm the association between undergraduate students’ value orientations and their social gender. The study indicates that intellectual values are at the top of students’ value hierarchy. The authors have established the following gender differences in the development of students’ value orientations: young men demonstrate more developed financial and physical values while young women show high indices of family, social and community ones. Conclusions. The obtained results confirm gender differences in the development of students’ social orientations which might influence their personal and professional development. The findings can be used for organizing educational process taking into account the revealed gender characteristics.