Gender specificity of the doctor's image and trust in themselves and others of student youth during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Introduction. Trust in the doctor is a necessary basis for willingness to follow his recommendations and effective treatment in general. It’s especially important during a pandemic. Before the coronavirus epidemic, a certain crisis of trust in medicine in Russia was recorded. New researches have supplemented scientific ideas on the problem with rather contradictory data on how men and women react to a situation that poses a serious health risk and what kind of image of a doctor and medical care is formed. This article analyzes the features of the image of a doctor among students of socionomic profiles and reveals the specifics of its relationship with the level of trust in others and themselves among young men and women during the COVID-19 pandemic. Materials and Methods. The study involved 286 students studying at universities in Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod in socionomic specialties, aged 17 to 22 years (M =19.31; SD = 1.33), 168 of them were women and 118 men. The method of semantic differential to identify the image of a doctor was used, the method of «Faith in People» by M.Rosenberg was used to determine the level of trust in others, and a reflexive questionnaire by T.P.Skripkina was used to study the expression of the trust students in themselves in 11 spheres of life. Results. It was found that young men and women during the pandemic formed a positive image of a doctor, in the content of which gender similarity is mostly noted. There are also practically no gender differences in trust in others, which is at an average level, but at the same time, some gender differences in trust in themselves were revealed, which turned out to be higher among male students. Correlation analysis showed the existence of a direct positive relationship between trust in others and a positive image of a doctor in women, whereas in men such connections are practically absent. At the same time, the image of a doctor is also positively connected with trust in themselves, but differently in female and male students. Discussion and Conclusions. Based on the results of an empirical study, we can talk about gender specificity, manifested in the presence and severity of the interrelations of the perception of a doctor during a pandemic with the general level of trust in others and in themselves among students of a socionomic profile.