Values and Planned Emigration Behavior Among Students from Three Countries. Part I. Introduction to Study

An important condition for forecasting and preventing the outflow of young people abroad is the study of psychological mechanisms of forming the emigration intentions of youth. The aim of this study is a comparative analysis of the relationship between the components of planned emigration behavior and the values of student youth in various sociocultural contexts. The participants of the study were university students aged 18–25 from Belarus (n=208, 25% men, mean age=19.8), Kazakhstan (n=200, 26% men, mean age=20.5) and Russia (n=250, 26% men, mean age=20.0). We used the questionnaire “Planned emigration behavior” which we developed as well as the shortened version of the “Survey of Portrait Values” by Sh. Schwartz (“PVQ-21 — ESS”). For statistical analysis we used SPSS Statistics version 23 and AMOS version 23. We did an ANOVA, a multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, and a multigroup path analysis. In this part of the article we showed the results of testing of the multi-group model of the author’s questionnaire “Planned emigration behavior” and cross-cultural analysis of the manifestation of values and components of planned emigration behavior among students of three countries. The configural, metric and scalar invariance of the multigroup model of the questionnaire is confirmed. According to the results, Belarusian and Kazakhtani students are more likely to implement emigration intentions in behavior than Russian students are. They are also more likely than Russian students to think that people who matter to them would approve of them moving abroad. We will present the relationships of values and components of planned emigration behavior among students of the three countries in the second part of the article in the next issue of the journal.