PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ FEARS IN THE PERIOD OF SOCIO-POLITICAL TRANSFORMATIONS

The paper aims to investigate types of fears experienced by female and male students of higher pedagogical educational establishments in the period of socio-political transformations, as well to examine gender specificity for the development of strategies for overcoming fears. An empirical study was carried out with the help of a psychodiagnostic method “Actual Fears Hierarchical Structure Inventory” by Y. Shcherbatykh and O. Ivlev, consisting of 24 types of fears, the intensity of which is estimated according to a 10-point scale; the sum of points received according to every fear is an integral indicator of fear), the methods of mathematical statistics (analysis of mean values, the method of percentage ratio, Spearman's rank correlation coefficient). The research has shown that in terms of socio-political transformations both in female and male students, the indicators of expressiveness of all kinds of fears exceed normative values. Female respondents have higher rates of fears as compared to the male students. These are, first of all, general-existential, social, fears of aggression. Concerning male respondents, the following kinds of fear significantly exceed the normative indicators: general-existential, future-related, and bodily. It has been found that such kinds of fears as spatial (fear of depth, fear of height, etc.), zoophobia (fear of spiders and snakes, etc.) in boys and girls in the period of socio-political transformations tend to decrease. The analysis of quantitative data by means of Spearman's rank correlation coefficient has revealed a statistically significant relationship between the fear of war and fear of future in the respondents, which confirms their common existential nature. The results of the study have shown the need for comprehensive and systemic psycho-corrective work on overcoming and preventing fears in students