Education, relationships, and place: life choices in the narratives of university master students

Oxana Mikhaylova; Alexandra Bochaver; Victoria Yerofeyeva

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1232370

Education, relationships, and place: life choices in the narratives of university master students

Front Psychol. 2024 Apr 17:15:1232370. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1232370. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Oxana Mikhaylova^{1

2}, Alexandra Bochaver¹, Victoria Yerofeyeva¹

Affiliations

¹ Centre for Modern Childhood Research, HSE University, Moscow, Russia.
² Department for Social Institutions Analysis, HSE University, Moscow, Russia.

Abstract

Choice is one of the most roughly defined concepts in contemporary social sciences. Previous studies have elucidated the factors that influence young people's choices in different life situations. However, it is still unclear how young people evaluate these choices and how they integrate them into their biographies. In this study, we examine the narratives of 30 first-year master's students at HSE University with regard to two categories of life choices: those that they perceive as fortunate and those that they perceive as unfortunate. Using a written online survey, the data was collected in the spring of 2022. To categorize the different decision kinds, thematic analysis was applied. Overall, we discovered that narratives about the life choices made by master students concentrated on education, relationships and place.

Keywords: McAdams; essays; fortunate choices; life choices; narrative analysis; unfortunate choices; university students; written communication.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This research was supported by the basic research program at HSE University.