Young College Students and Their Values: A Comparative Study Between Brazil and China

Young college students and their values:

a comparative study between Brazil and China

Marilena Nakano

Marilia Pontes Sposito

This is a quantitative sampling research held within the scope of the Brazil-China Agreement. It compares the Brazilian college youth with the Chinese, in the 17 to 24 year-old age bracket. The data was obtained in 2012, by means of a same questionnaire in both countries.

The paper will privilege the data related to values and visions about the best and the worst aspects of being a youngster. It will analyze the differences between young men and women. In spite of similarities, what attracts most attention is the configuration of the two distinct modes of being young: a Brazilian and a Chinese.

There will also be some reflections about the research conduction process and the interactions between the researchers and the different cultures and countries are also to be considered.  .

With regard to the results, the peculiarities of each group are being identified. Thus, for example, for Brazilian college students, the best thing about being young is to have “dreams and objectives” and the worst part is to “not be able to be self-supporting”. On the other hand, for the Chinese youngsters that were interviewed, the best thing is “to be healthy and fit” and the worst is “to be insecure regarding the future”. It is interesting to note that they fear they can be “easily influenced”, whereas this fear is not strongly representative among Brazilians.

Notwithstanding the singularities observed between the youths of each society, it can be observed that there are some transverse points of contact that allow us to go ahead in drawing up the contemporary juvenile condition, incorporating the differences of genders as a fundamental aspect.