Abdullaeva Mehirban M.

Background. The relevance of studying the world image of music professionals is provided by 1) the researchers’ interest to the creative professionals characterized by particular emotional sensitivity and artistic vision of the world; 2) a change in public perceptions of music professions; 3) the need to find adequate methods for a holistic description of the features of different professional activities. 

Objectives of the study: a) revealing the psychosemantic structures of the world image in the professionals occupied in the music industry; b) reconstruction of the features of their professional activities; c) identifying the differences between the specialists of different profile within the musical sphere. 

Sample. The study involved musicians — vocalists and instrumentalists of academic and pop profile (n = 42) and sound engineers and arrangers (n = 38). The control group consisted of professionals (n = 42) not related to music and playing no musical instruments. The total sample included 122 people. 

Methods. 1) a questionnaire to collect demographic information about respondents; 2) 16-scale semantic differential “My work” (Abdullaeva, 2016); 3) the free association method for 12 stimulus words describing the communicative environment of the respondents. 

Results. The study allowed for obtaining semantic profiles of the image of occupation in different profile specialists within the musical sphere. The data analysis has revealed different level representations of the world image in the respondents. Factor structures for groups of musicians and sound engineers describe a stable cluster consisting of interest, diversity, development potential, personal affinity, and creativity. The correlations of association’s categories (p ≤ 0.001) demonstrate the division of sound engineers and musicians according to publicity and technical equipment. 

Conclusion. The obtained data on externally unobservable aspects of creative activity on the psychosemantic approach makes it possible to enrich ideas about the activities of specialists in the music sphere and outline the directions of their psychological support. 

Obtaining data on externally unobservable aspects of creative activity made it possible to enrich ideas about the activities of music professionals and outline the directions for their psychological support. The practical use of the study results is associated with implementing the psychosemantic approach to the analysis of professional experience and identifying the main characteristics of the occupations in the music sphere.