How Scholar Beginners Reflect Their Professional Activity

The research represented in the paper aims at determining the degree of awareness of scholar beginners of the essence of their professional activity. In particular, we study the verbal conceptualization of the notions scientific method, research protocol, and specific research protocol by highlighting and analyzing the composition of lexicosemantic fields, constructed based on the definitions given by the respondents through sociological surveys. The introduction describes the social conditions in which the issue of reflection on professional activity by scholar beginners becomes significant and topical. The paper reveals the content of the concepts under study as presented in the scientific and methodological literature and describes the methodology and results of the ongoing empirical research. The findings help to define similar and differentiating lexicosemantic components within the meanings of the concepts under study. Based on the 99 lexicosemantic components and their intersections in the composition of lexicosemantic categories, generalized interpretations of the concepts under study were modeled. It was possible to state that the concepts research protocol and specific research protocol are taken by the respondents to be synonyms, while they differ from the concept scientific method mainly in the core of the most represented lexicosemantic category of phenomenon nomination.