Higher School Students’ Notion About Social Activity
The relevance of the study is determined by the identification of the specifics of students’ notion about social activity. The goal of the research is to study the structure of the notion of the social activity phenomenon among the young people on a student sample (N = 100, 65% are female, 58% are up to 25 years old). Presumably, the notion in the context under consideration has an unstable structure. The research was carried out using the method of free associations following the ranking of the semantic components of the notion of social activity according to the frequency of their actualization, using the prototypical data analysis by P. Vergès and the method of content analysis. We found out that young students lack a relatively constant and well-formed notion of social activity. This is evident by the absence of a central core in the entire sample and in the sub-samples (distribution by gender, age, mode of study). The identified associations can be grouped into three main semantic groups: educational and professional (work, labour, study), socio-psychological (activity, conflict, family, friendship) and common sense (life, choice, world, the Internet). Students of higher educational institutions associate the phenomenon under study with positive educational, professional, social psychological and general characteristics. In general, the notion of social activity is characterized by dynamism and is at the stage of formation.