Value Changes in Adolescents’ Anticipation of Possible Career Selves in Slovenia and Serbia

Abstract

A study on adolescents’ visions of the future, regarding the important goals for themselves and plans for their accomplishment, was conducted on representative samples of high-school students in the last grades in Serbia (N = 1.973) and Slovenia (N = 882), in the autumn of 2015. The adolescents filled out a questionnaire on their visions of the future in different domains. We focused on their career as the central topic of their visions about future selves, which is assumed as conditional for fulfilment of the other identity domains and could be accomplished mainly due to individual efforts and flexible adaptation to environmental opportunities. These differ between the two countries, which experienced different post-socialist transitions into the market economy (and related value changes towards individualism) since early 1990s, from the previous common state, the Socialist Federal Republic Yugoslavia. As hypothesized, these different societal changes were reflected in the adolescents’ visions about their future career.