Comparative Empirical Analysis of the Russian and Buryat Youth Resilience

Abstract

Objective. Identification of the possible, conditioned by the ethnocultural peculiarities of the way of living differences in the indicators of resilience, in the connections, in the significance of its components and the factors in the representatives of Russian and Buryat youth (from 15 to 24 years). Background. The increase in social and economic tensions and the challenges of modern social life make for increased demands on human resilience. Psychological science is aware of the request for an analysis of phenomenology and the essence of resilience in its various aspects. One such angle is ethnocultural variations in the resilience of people from different nationalities, in particular Russians and Buryats. It is important to determine the general and the ethno-specific components of resilience, factors of its support and the risk factors. Study design. There is studied the resilience indicators in the samples of Russian and Buryat respondents, by means of the cluster analysis has determined the structure of variables, their comparison is carried out. The correlations between the variables within each cluster are revealed, there were given a comparative assessment of these relationships, of resilience components significance, factors of support and the risk in each sample. Participants. Sample: 109 Russian students from the universities and 98 Buryat students from the universities and a college. The total sample is 207 people. Measurements. The diagnosis was carried out under the program “Resilient Youth in stressed environments” – “Zhiznesposobnaya molodezh' v stressovykh usloviyakh”, RYSE (Laktionova, Makhnach, 2008; Ungar, Hadfield, 2019), which includes 9 questionnaires named in the article, and a socio-demographic questionnaire. Results. The results of the study testify to the similarity of the level (it is high for most of the respondents in both samples), basic characteristics of resilience and its factors (their own forces, support of family and society). At the same time, the differences for all variables included in the protective factors were revealed. The indicators of resilience Buryat students are higher than in Russians. The differences are particularly clear appeared in indicators of contextually resilience primarily in assessments of the significance of religious faith, the attitudes to the culture and traditions of their people. There were found differences in the interrelations of variables: the indicator of victimization in Buryat respondents is positively associated only with the indicator of the "Traumatic Symptoms" scale, and in the Russian sample – with indicators of depression and positive childhood experiences. Negative correlations of this variable in the Russian sample are noted with the indicators of all resilience components and with the rate of the Perception of Neighbourhood. There are no significant negative correlations on this scale in the Buryat sample. Conclusions. Resilience has foundations, structure and factors common to people of different nationalities. No unique national peculiarities in the resilience of representatives of Russian and Buryat youth were found. However, the ethno-cultural features of the way of life determine some distinctions in an assessment conducted by the respondents of different nationalities of the resilience components significance, its factors, connections of its indicators and characteristics.