SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC PREDICTORS OF EMOTIONAL AND PERSONAL WELL-BEING OF YOUNG PEOPLE

The article deals with the peculiarities of emotional and personal well-being of young people. This age group is characterized by the social plasticity, pronounced action potential, ability to quickly adapt to modern innovations and to respond flexibly to the demands of society. However, not all young people meet the abovementioned criteria. Often, lack of life experience, low tolerance to stress factors make young people vulnerable and lead to such negative consequences as permanent negative emotional background, personal destruction, antisocial behavior, etc. In this regard, the study of predictors of well-being or non-well-being experienced by young people becomes especially important. Indeed, it is at this age, due to conscious relation to oneself, to one's own life and to the surrounding world, when ideas about one's own well-being in various spheres, including emotional and personal well-being, continue to be formed. The emotional and personal well-being is a holistic existential experience of the harmony between the inner and outer world, arising in the process of life, activity and communication. It is considered not as a result of a certain period, but as a dynamic system, which components change the degree of expression under the influence of a number of factors, including socio-demographic ones. Emotional and personal well-being was studied by the author's technique "Self-evaluation of Emotional and Personal Well-being" (SEPW).Based on the developed typology of emotional and personal well-being (strong positive SEPW, weak positive SEPW, weak negative SEPW and strong negative SEPW), the author explores the severity of its indicators in the age group from 18 to 30 years. The results and their detailed analysis allow to make the conclusion, that young people are less predisposed to negative self-esteem of emotional and personal well-being, compared with the respondents of middle and mature age. Besides, young people assess themselves significally higher as more happy, lucky, optimistic and successful, than older people. At the same time, the differences in emotional and personal well-being are expressed more distinctly than in non-well-being. It is proved that the indicators of the emotional and personal well-being of young people are stable in relation to such socio-demographic factors as the type of professional activity and gender. So, there are no reliable differences in the values of the investigated parameters in the sample of students and professionals. Also, differences in the emotional and personal well-being between men and women of this age category are not identified. With that, education is a very significant predictor of emotional and personal well-being: in a group of youth, the index of emotional and personal well-being increases from the group of respondents "without education" to a group of young people who received higher education. As a result, the author comes to the conclusion that it is the educated youth that most positively assesses its emotional and personal well-being regardless of gender and type of professional activity.