Semantic And Cognitive Content Of The “Work” Concept: Content Analysis Results

Abstract

The study was granted by the Russian Science Foundation (project No 18-18-00386), the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and supported by RSF grant (project No 18-18-00386), Institute of Psychology RAS. The main goal of the research was to study the semantic and cognitive content of the "work" concept and to determine its differential, classificational and categoric-cognitive signs through the content analysis. The research methodology was based on the content analysis and statistics. 2,497 persons (average age-27 years old) participated in the empiric study. The signs/indices (537 in total) occurrence frequency (total frequency of occurrence is 24,446) analysis allowed characterizing the cognitive content of the "work" concept. The study of such signs/indices manifestation peculiarities as stability/instability, distinct manifestation and intensity conditioned system-based representation of the concept signs. Statistical review of the research results helped to determine signs being nonuniformly distributed; this distribution is characterized by kurtosis and skewness because of positive modality predominance. The "work" concept signs extremum values (occurrence frequency from 107.00 to 1351.00) express fullness, intensity and stability of these signs manifestation. A group of average positive and negative "work" concept indices includes characteristics proving young people's positive thinking of working activity from the point of view of self-identity, self-definition conation, working load peculiarities, labour management conditions and process. Negative signs mean low labour safety and protection, heavy workload and low salary level. The content analysis results offer the challenge of further "work" concept cognitive content studying and can also be bases for its components and structural correlations defining.