Cross-cultural study of career orientations in youth: A case study of Uzbekistan, China, and Russia

Abstract

One of the modern labor market trends is a need to attract an increasing number of highly skilled workers, including from abroad. This inevitably leads to higher standards of personnel training in secondary vocational education institutions. Besides, the enrollment of foreign youth in educational programs requires an adaptation of learning materials to students’ cultural specifics. This study seeks to identify the career orientations and preferences of foreign youth when obtaining vocational qualifications in the Russian Federation. The study involved young people aged 14 to 35 from Uzbekistan (62), China (30), and Russia (57). The following methods were used: Career Anchors by E. Schein, an -developed questionnaire to determine preferences among secondary vocational education specialties, personal characteristics of career and professional path planning, and socio-demographic characteristics, as well as mathematical data processing methods. Our results are helpful in comparing career orientations and preferences in obtaining vocational qualifications among youth main characteristics of their professional expectations. These findings can be instrumental in adapting secondary vocational education programs with regard to cultural specifics and in determining the demand for specific fields of study. The work is to present the results of a pilot study conducted as part of sian Federation on the topic ‘Organizing integrated subjectlanguage learning of Russian as a foreign language, considering the specifics of the profession being mastered in secondary vocational education institutions’ (project No. VRFY-2025-0020).