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

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.