The Role of Civic Identity, Religiosity, Sex, and Education in Young People's Commitment to Various Forms of Social Activity

Abstract

The problem of social activity of young people is in the field of research attention of psychology, sociology, law, pedagogy and other sciences. The social activity of young people is an important basis for the dynamic and innovative development of society. Studying the factor structure and the role of socio-psychological characteristics in integral (combined) forms of social activity is an important task of modern social psychology. The aim of the study is to investigate the structure of social activity of young people and, based on a path analysis, to determine the role of civic identity, religiosity, sex, and education in commitment to various (combined) forms of social activity. The study involved 305 people aged M = 21.2; SD = 2.95 (men - 35.4%), 17.4% of the participants were married. A questionnaire aimed at fixing socio-demographic characteristics, civic identity, religiosity, attitudes of social activity, and developed scales aimed at measuring commitment to various types of social activity were used. To assess this commitment, previously developed scales were used. Civil identity was determined using A.N. Tatarko’s scale. Descriptive statistics methods, factorial, correlation, regression and path analyses were also applied. It has been shown that the four-component (civil-political, protest-subcultural, spiritual-educational, leisure) factor model of forms of social activity is acceptable for all the analyzed dimensions. As a result of modeling, a direct relationship between gender and education is established with the manifestations of educational-developing, civil-political and leisure, educational-developing activity respectively. Civil identity is a positive factor in civil-political activity and a negative factor in protest-subcultural activity. At the center of the model is the commitment to spiritual and educational activity, which contributes to the prediction of all the other forms of activity, i.e., civil-political and leisure (directly), and protest-subcultural (indirectly). The facilitating or hindering and mediating role of civic identity, religiosity, gender, and education in commitment to various forms of social activity can be used in organizing social activity of young people as well as in developing “guided” socialization programs.