Abstract
An international comparative study (Cabinet Office) reveals that the ratio of Japanese youths without high hopes for the future is high compared to other countries. This study is based on Web survey targeting 140 college students and qualitatively analyses the reasons for having or not having high hopes, which reveals six determining categories. College students with/without high hopes had different experiences based on the dimension (from high to low) of three properties (“clarity of goals”, “likelihood of achieving goals”, and “positive outlook”). The “positive outlook” property, which is associated with pleasant mood and feelings, was considered to be more influential on college students’ hopes than the two properties related to future goals. It was also suggested that there is the possibility of “something that is not directly verbalized” from the perspective of the interaction between society and the individual. The future challenge is to conduct interview surveys based on the categories acquired through this study and to refine the theory of hope for young people.
