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Background: The development of high-quality human capital is an important objective that involves value orientations, cultural dimensions and psychological characteristics of activity. This article presents a cross-cultural comparison of value orientations and psychological parameters of activity among youth from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Latvia. Objective: The study addressed three questions: (1) Are there values and attitudes related to the readiness for activity among youth in the three countries? (2) Are there any differences between values and parameters of the psychological system of activity in the Russian, Kazakhstani and Latvian samples? (3) What values and attitudes predict the youth's readiness for activity in each country? Design: University students from Russia, Kazakhstan and Latvia were invited to participate in the study. The study sample was selected according to age, sex and period of living in the country. Value orientations, cultural dimensions and attitudes were measured by the Values Survey Module, World Values Survey questionnaire, The Subjective Evaluation of Basic Values Realisability. Personality Research Form, Quality of Life Enjoyment and Satisfaction Questionnaire, Subjective Happiness Scale, Self-Organisation of Activity Questionnaire, Differential Test of Reflexivity, and Satisfaction with Life Scale questionnaires were applied to evaluate the psychological parameters of activity. To analyse the relationship between value orientations and psychological parameters of activity, we used analysis of variance, Pearson's correlation coefficient and stepwise linear regression. Results: The cross-cultural variance was established for most values and cultural dimensions in the Russian, Kazakhstani, and Latvian samples, but Personal readiness for activity only differed on the tendency level between the Kazakhstani and Latvian samples. Different values and attitudes accounted for near 57% of the Personal readiness for activity index in Russia and Latvia, but just less than 29% in Kazakhstan. Conclusion: The activity of university students from Russia depends on their need for achievement and level of happiness. In the Kazakhstani and Latvian samples, the most important factor was the quality of life enjoyment and satisfaction index.
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OBJECTIVE: The Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (MHC-SF) is a brief scale measuring positive human functioning. The study aimed to examine the factor structure and to explore the cross-cultural utility of the MHC-SF using bifactor models and exploratory structural equation modelling. METHOD: Using multigroup confirmatory analysis (MGCFA) we examined the measurement invariance of the MHC-SF in 38 countries (university students, N = 8,066; 61.73% women, mean age 21.55 years). RESULTS: MGCFA supported the cross-cultural replicability of a bifactor structure and a metric level of invariance between student samples. The average proportion of variance explained by the general factor was high (ECV = .66), suggesting that the three aspects of mental health (emotional, social, and psychological well-being) can be treated as a single dimension of well-being. CONCLUSION: The metric level of invariance offers the possibility of comparing correlates and predictors of positive mental functioning across countries; however, the comparison of the levels of mental health across countries is not possible due to lack of scalar invariance. Our study has preliminary character and could serve as an initial assessment of the structure of the MHC-SF across different cultural settings. Further studies on general populations are required for extending our findings.
