Subjective Well-Being Achievement Profiles in Young People: Ethno-Regional and Gender Aspects

The desire of young people to achieve subjective well-being as a life goal makes a significant contribution to the actualization of their resources, determining various forms of activity. The purpose of the study was to identify differential typological profiles of achieving subjective well-being among Russian young people and to determine the ethno-regional and gender-specific distribution of the resulting profiles. The study sample consisted of 1616 respondents (55% - female) aged 18-35 ( M age = 20.6 ± 3.4 years) from 5 regions, including Karachay-Cherkess Republic, Kabardino-Balkarian Republic, Republic of North Ossetia - Alania, Stavropol Territory, Moscow and the Moscow Region. Seven dominant ethno-regional groups with a total number of 1260 people were identified. Data were collected anonymously using Google-forms. The diagnostic complex included: Self-Regulation Profile Questionnaire, SRPQM-2020 (by V.I. Morosanova); Personal Subjective Well-Being Diagnostics Methodology (by R.M. Shamionov and T.V. Beskova); Tolerance/Intolerance to Uncertainty Questionnaire (by T.V. Kornilova and M.A. Chumakova); Perceived Stress Questionnaire (by T. Yang); The Mini-IPIP Scales by M.B. Donnellan et al. (Short Form of the Goldberg’ International Personality Item Pool-Five-Factor Model measure). To determine the relationship between the indicators of self-regulation, subjective well-being and personal dispositions, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted. Four factors were identified, namely: activity, openness, consistency, and stressority. Through a configuration-frequency analysis, differential typological profiles for achieving subjective well-being were identified: basic, operational, passive, harmonious and directive. It was found that the manifestation of the typological features of subjective well-being was based on certain structural and functional features of conscious self-regulation (planning, programming), as well as personal dispositions (activity, openness, stress resistance, formation of attitudes toward tolerance to uncertainty). The most common profile turned out to be the basic one. The most vulnerable profile, passive, was characterized by low levels of regulatory and personal resources. The young people of the operational profile were close to those of the basic profile in terms of their level of subjective well-being, but were statistically significantly superior to it in terms of the openness factor. For the harmonious and directive profiles, there were no significant differences between the average subjective well-being indicators. At the same time, the representatives of the harmonious profile were distinguished by pronounced openness and low stressority, while those of the directive profile had the lowest indicators of the openness and the highest regulatory indicators of planning and programming in relation to their actions. There was a significant asymmetry in the distribution of the identified profiles depending on the gender and ethno-regional affiliation of the respondents. The males were more likely to have the directive and basic profiles, while the females were more likely to have the harmonious and operational profiles, which appeared to be quite consistent with gender stereotypes. The predominant distribution of profiles in ethno-regional terms was as follows: the basic profile in relatively monocultural regions (Karachay-Cherkess Republic, Kabardino-Balkarian Republic); the operational profile in relatively multicultural regions (Republic of North Ossetia - Alania, Stavropol Territory and Moscow and the Moscow Region); the passive profile in Kabardino-Balkarian Republic; the harmonious profile of girls from the Stavropol Territory, Moscow and the Moscow Region, Republic of North Ossetia - Alania and Karachay-Cherkess Republic; and the directive profile in men from Republic of North Ossetia - Alania. The results of this empirical study clearly demonstrated the possibility of using a differential psychological approach to assessing the structure of the relationship between subjective well-being, personal dispositions and conscious self-regulation to identify the prerequisites for achieving subjective well-being by young people.