Social responsibility and personal innovativeness of working and non-working students

Introduction. The article focuses on the relationship between social responsibility and various indicators of personal innovativeness as components of innovative activity. The research objective of the article is to study the influence of professional experience on the style of innovative activity. Materials and Methods. The study involved 528 people. In order to measure personal innovativeness, the authors relied on the following methodological approaches: M. Kirton's concept of differentiating people according to their attitude to new ideas and technologies; M. Basadur's concept to build a creative personality profiles and V. A. Artemeva's approach considering social responsibility as a separate component of personal innovativeness. The methodical complex included M. Kirton, M. Basadur, and V.A. Artemeva's techniques and the J. Rotter's locus of control technique. Results. Methodological and methodical approaches to description and evaluation of the future specialists' innovative activity are analyzed and compared. The results show that working students have a higher level of social responsibility than non-working students. Significant differences in indicators of personal innovativeness between the groups of working and non-working students are obtained. The M. Kirton's general indicator of innovation and some indicators of the M. Basadur's innovative style (research, generation of ideas, reflection, evaluation) are higher among the non-working students. At the same time, working students demonstrate higher rates of innovation by the V. A. Artemeva's technique. Moreover, they have a higher level of the J. Rotter general internality. Conclusions. The results show that work experience contributes to increasing students' social responsibility but slightly reduces the level of personal innovativeness.