Social psychological monitoring of students' intentions to engage in scientific activity: the results of the approbation of the methodological complex

The relevance of the research is due to the increasing role of science and technology, the need to transfer academic experience from generation to generation and the need for an influx of young scientists into the scientific field. The purpose of the article is to test the methodological complex of socio-psychological monitoring of students' intentions to engage in scientific activity. The theoretical basis for monitoring was I. Aizen's theory of planned behavior, adapted by the authors to the tasks of the study. To measure the factors and prerequisites of students' scientific intentions, the following scenarios were used: scenarios modeling situations of choosing a career as a scientist; ranking profiles of their own personal traits and qualities associated with the personality of a scientist; ordinal and nominal scales for assessing the severity of readiness indicators; correlation analysis multiple regression analysis as a method of constructing a model for predicting intentions depending on a number of psychological and social predictors. The model tested 10 indicators that could potentially influence students' intentions to engage in scientific activity. The results showed that 6 out of 10 indicators have a significant impact. At the same time, the greatest contribution to the intention to engage in scientific activity is made by the desire to engage in science, attitude and preference for a career as a scientist. Noticeably smaller and comparable contributions are made by variables of scientific research awareness, perceived behavior control, and gender. The formation of a stable desire to engage in scientific research and attitude can become a lever of influence on the intentions of students to engage in science. Both of these factors have a certain relationship with each other. The approved methodological complex aimed at assessing the scientific intentions of students includes affective-motivational, socio-demographic and cognitive variables. The selected predictors of intentions make it possible to identify students who are focused on scientific activities, even in the case of uncertain intentions. The prospects of the research are related to the development of a methodology that takes into account significant variables of different types and properties of scientific intentions