Value shifts in Vietnamese students studying in Russia

Background. The extension of intercultural contacts in the present-day world calls for a thorough study of what eect these contacts produce on the human personality. When an individual is suddenly immersed in a dierent culture, his or her consciousness becomes a battleeld where new values conict with the old. e person experiences an axiologi-cal shock, a ``value clash,” which urges him or her to undertake a re-examination of his/her value system as a whole.Objective. e objective of this study was to determine the changes occurring in the value system of Vietnamese students obtaining their higher education in Russia.Design. A longitudinal study was performed involving 100 Vietnamese students in Russian universities. e measurement methods used in the study were: 1) the modied M. Rokeach Value Survey (Rokeach, 1973; Kudrjashov, 1992), in which the original set of values was expanded by 20 additional values typical of the Vietnamese people; and 2) the technique for assessing acculturation strategies developed by J.W. Berry (Strategii mezhkul’turnogo vzaimodejstvija..., 2009).Results. In the course of a year of residence in Russia, specic changes (or “shis”) occurred in the value systems of the Vietnamese students which proved to be statisti-cally signicant. Among the goal values (the same as terminal values, in the terms of M. Rokeach) which took on more weight were Productive Life and Materially Prosper-ous Life, while among instrumental values, Tidiness and Frugality became more promi-nent. A dierence between the value dynamics in male and female students was also established, with the value pattern of male students proving to be more dynamic. e next nding was the dierence in value dynamics between students coming from urban and rural settlements. ere was one more quite unexpected nding: e value pattern changed more noticeably in respondents with an acculturation prole of “Integration and Separation,” than in those with proles of “Integration and Assimilation” and “Pure Integration.”Conclusions. erefore we see that factors such as gender, type of environment (rural/urban) the individual comes from, and the strategy of acculturation used by the individual, act as mediators exerting their own inuence upon the dynamics of his/her value patterns.Abbreviation: PF = Preliminary Faculty