Slovenian Youth and Military Profession 1997

Research into the attitude of Slovenian youth towards the military profession stems from the need of the Slovenian Armed Forces to become acquainted with the willingness to perform the military profession/professional of that part of the young population from which potential candidates for professional soldiers and higher education of future military professionals originate. The starting point from which the researchers came from was the fact that in Slovenia after independence there were processes typical of all newly formed states, which during the period of independence possessed certain armed force and which they also used in armed conflicts. Even after independence, Slovenia maintained the compulsory completion of armed forces with soldiers, but the need for sufficiently educated and skilled personnel far exceeded the supply of the labour market. The need for highly qualified military professional personnel in the Slovenian Armed Forces is increasing in the context of the process of bringing Slovenia closer to Euro-Atlantic security integrations, which is accompanied by a high intensity and multi-layered functional, structural and organisational transformation of the Slovenian Armed Forces. However, the monitoring of young people’s motivation for military professions so far has shown that, in the consciousness of Slovenian youth, the military profession still does not represent a competitive and truly attractive path for the realisation of professional aspirations and the achievement of social recognition. The practical purpose of the research is to study the subjective and objective factors that encourage young people to decide for a military profession or inhibit them in a possible such decision, and to obtain concrete data on the motivation of young people in Slovenia for military professions. The research therefore presents an analysis of young people’s desires for military occupation, young people’s attitudes towards security, homeland, world peace and threats in the modern world.