How Scholar Beginners Reflect Their Professional Activity

The research represented in the paper aims at determining the degree of awareness of scholar beginners about 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 lexico-semantic fields, constructed on the definitions given by the respondents through sociological survey. The introduction describes the social conditions in which the issue of professional activity reflection by scholar beginners becomes significant and topical. The paper reveals the content of the notions under study, presented in the scientific and methodological literature, and also describes the methodology and results of the ongoing empirical research. Based on the results obtained, the paper reveals similar and differentiating lexico-semantic components within the meanings of the notions under study. Based on the 99 lexico-semantic components and their intersection in the composition of lexico-semantic categories, generalized interpretations of the notions under study were modeled. It was possible to fix that the notions «research protocol » and «specific research protocol» are considered by the respondents as synonyms, but at the same time they differ from the notion «scientific method» mainly in the core of the most presented lexico-semantic category «phenomenon nomination».