Measuring socio-cultural phenomena in education: national identity

The article is devoted to the development of methodology for measuring socio-cultural phenomena in the context of national identity formation in education. The authors of the study develop the problems of data reproducibility and construct validity in the perspective of didactic support of students' self-identification. The study relies on cultural and individual-personal approaches, as well as a wide range of methods, including surveys, scale techniques and qualitative interpretation of data. In terms of the theoretical framework of the study, the paper pays significant attention to the analysis of the realist and constructionist approaches to the validity of qualitative research. The empirical part of the study is based on the developments of J. Marcia, Y. V. Borisenko and the original tools proposed by the authors. The paper presents the primary diagnostics of undergraduate students' identity (a representative sample of 1st-4th year students of the Siberian Institute of Management - a branch of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration). Key trends and gaps in the perception of national identity are identified on the example of several experimental groups using the author's version of the incomplete sentences technique. The study empirically reveals the significance of interrelation and hierarchy of the collective and personal in identity, the concepts of national pride, civic responsibility and cultural inclusion. The results obtained confirm the multi-layered formation of national identity, the authors claim that the proposed methodology can be used when teaching disciplines that address the issues of self-identification of the indi-vidual to assess the quality of pedagogical support and personal dynamics of spiritual growth of students.