THE USE OF CONTENT-ANALYSIS FOR THE STUDY OF BASIC EXISTENTIAL CATEGORIES

Svetlana A. Kurbatova, Tatiana N. Savchenko

The purpose of the work - investigation of psychological phenomenon "existential fullness", the attitude to the basic aspects of human life of Graduate students of Psychological Department

The program of research• The 3rd year students (graduates) of the Higher School of

Psychology (Psychology as a second higher education) took part in the inquiry.

• The main materials used for the investigation included essays, which the students had written as an entering procedure at the beginning of the three-year course, and the so-called creative work they had to write at the end of the course.

• The creative work had the form of an interview with particular questions, which led the recipients to experiencing existential feelings and provided with the primary impulse for understanding and thinking over the subjects.

• Following the given questions they had to write an essay on four existential topics: death, sense, isolation and freedom.

Interaction with key existential factors may help in solving important problems:

• Death helps to understand the anxiety, is the source of the boundary of experience, is an indispensable catalyst for life;

• Sense helps a person to determine the main vector of his/her life, what he lives and how;

• Isolation makes it possible to clarify the interpersonal relations: to strive for their truth, rejecting the "functional" relationship where the other acts as a means;

• Freedom leads to an understanding of taking responsibility, openness to change, creativity, activity, decisions /

“Cascade” content-analysis

• In this work we applied the method of the so-called “cascade” content-analysis. A group of experts had to single out semantic constructs in the essays (Stubbs, 1983).

• At the next step we analysed their frequency in the texts. Finally we used other methods like the “Existential scale” survey, the Meaning-of-Life Orientations Test, locus of control, the content-analysis of the essays.

The results • The semantic content-analysis let us single out 4 main motives

for studying psychology as a second higher education. • Those are: acquiring extra knowledge to improve the quality

of existing professional activity, changing one’s profession, using psychological knowledge to improve one’s personal life as well as being able to help relatives, and the altruistic motive – to be able to help and support people who need it, to bring harmony to the world.

• Primary analysis of the creative works let us single out 10 semantic constructs for each of the categories of death, sense and freedom, and four constructs for isolation. Some of the constructs were similar enough to be united together and eventually there were 6 constructs for the category of

• death: avoiding, accepting, negative feelings, close people, higher mind, the accelerator of life;

• 5 constructs for freedom: freedom, sacrifice, responsibility, acceptance of desires, experience;

• 5 constructs for sense: super-sense, me and close people, life, altruism void of sense;

• and finally, 4 constructs for the category of isolation: loneliness, solitude, existential isolation, existential seclusion.

• Basing on the 4 constructs we conducted another content-analysis of the essays and the average results were put in a matrix according to each of the four categories.

• The results showed that the leading motive in accomplishing a second higher psychological education is the motive of solving personal problems, which might indicate the presence of psychological issues and difficulties in people’s life.

• However, the recipients can be generally described as people content with their lives and fate. The period of time they had lived was characterized as a productive, emotionally filled time, whereas loss, negative events and feelings are perceived not as some sort of punishment but as life experience, which teaches us to live, makes us stronger and even wealthier.

Table of mean values of all subshkal for the sample as a whole

scale

Samodistantsirova

nie SD

Self-transcendence

STLiberty F

Responsib

ilityV

Overall

score ЭН

Person

SD+ST

EXis

ten E=

F+V

Х36,65 78,19 45,06 51,12 211,03 114,84 96,18

Means interval

N

26-43 58-81 37-58 41-70169-249 86-123 81-127

Graph showing the results of two samples of respondents with the lowest and highest figures for the general degree of Ex

Interestto psychological knowledge

F+V SD+ST

Result experienceResult experience

locus of controlЯ/Жlocus of controlЯ/Ж

I canI can

Individual taskIndividual task

NeedNeed

Purpose - psychology

The decision of personal problems changes

The decision of personal problems changes

ProfessionProfession

The conclusion• In this research we analysed formal characteristics

that are connected with the definition of existential fullness of students who studied psychology in their last year.

• Such formal factors were the singled out semantic constructs, however the frequency analysis did not manage to fully demonstrate the difficulty of the work the participants did, namely that resistance they had to avoid.

• The depth of personal feelings and confusion could only be evaluated by reading the actual essays.

Thank you for your attention