Modern Russian Adolescents' Notions of Significant Personal Traits ¹³³⁸

The article provides the results of research investigating the core of significant personal traits, tracing developmental dynamics and influence of gender differences on changes in adolescents' preferences of personal traits. The empirical data are collected from interviews with 3056 pupils of Moscow secondary schools in 2009. The sample included 5—9th-graders, 50, 8% of them were female and 49,2 % — male. The obtained data underwent frequency domain analysis, content-analysis and factor analysis. The results demonstrate that present-day Russian pupils consider the personal traits that provide successful social interactions to be the most important. Preferences of some personal traits distinctly reveal age and gender differences; there is peculiar value-orientation of adolescent consciousness aimed at problematization of the sphere of moral and ethical relationships.

Keywords: puberty, gender self-determination, value orientations, significant personal qualities, leading activity, questionnaires, factor analysis.

Column: Experimental Research