At the present stage of the development of Russian society, which is carried out in the conditions of a tense foreign policy situation, the deterioration of the socio-economic situation, additionaly associated with the spread of COVID-19, protracted transformation and modernization processes, the problems of the younger generation in the field of socio-political activity and the formation of appropriate values are particularly acute.
The purpose of the article is to identify and describe the structure of socio-political values of the youth, as well as latent factors affecting the construction of a hierarchy of values of the youth.
Due to the fact that the modern young generation is very differentiated by the level of education, culture, financial situation, socio-professional status, the authors used methods of generalization, comparison, causal analysis in the present research.
The article presents the results of the authors’ sociological study “Socio-political activity of the youth aged 25-35 years of Ulyanovsk” conducted in July — August 2021 and carried out with the financial support of the Ulyanovsk Public Foundation “Regional analytics. Professional research. Ratings” (RAPIR), part of which was dedicated to the study of the structure of socio-political values of the youth.
To collect sociological information, the method of a sociological survey in the form of a questionnaire using the Quizer service and focused interviews in groups was used. To structure socio-political values of the youth aged 25-35 years of Ulyanovsk, a score-rating scale was applied. The factor analysis made it possible to identify hidden (latent) factors influencing the construction of a hierarchy of values among young people and making it possible to typologize groups of the Ulyanovsk youth aged 25-35 years with different levels of presence of socio-political values.
The article demonstrates that the system of socio-political values of the youth has a complexly differentiated structure; most of the values are verbally declarative in nature with a strong paternalistic orientation and the predominance of individual values over collective ones.