CRITERIA FOR CHOOSING A FUTURE SPOUSE BY A WOMAN IN THE PREMARITAL PERIOD

The article presents a study of the subjective criteria for women choosing a marriage partner during premarital relations, which are considered as potential criteria for the meaningful choice of a spouse. The authors theoretically justify the limitations for conducting research in this subject field, especially the low level of knowledge of the meaningful choice phenomenon and the lack of valid methods for diagnosing criteria of meaningful choice. To conduct the research, the authors developed a questionnaire based on the ultimate meanings technique by D. A. Leontiev and the method “Who am I?” by M. Kuhn and T. McPartland. As a result of applying the developed questionnaire, a list of subjective criteria for choosing a spouse was obtained and analysed in terms of content and quantity. The analysis made it possible to identify 10 of the most common criteria that can be considered in further studies as potential criteria for the meaningful choice of a marriage partner.