Open AccessStudy of the Factors Determining the Consciousness of Limited Research Abilities of Enterprise Researchers Due to Aging
Author(s) -
Nishimura Junichi,
Suzuki Shosuke
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
journal of occupational health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.664
H-Index - 59
ISSN - 1348-9585
DOI - 10.1539/joh.43.243
Subject(s) - consciousness , psychology , personality , level of consciousness , similarity (geometry) , social psychology , salient , personality type , clinical psychology , developmental psychology , political science , computer science , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , law , image (mathematics)
Study of the Factors Determining the Consciousness of Limited Research Abilities of Enterprise Researchers Due to Aging: Junichi Nishimura, et al. Department of Psychology and Education, Tokyo Kasei University— In this study, a functional relation between age and ability of enterprise researchers was forecasted as a means of discussing their age‐related consciousness focusing on the five aspects of professional, technical, management, informative, and physiological abilities. Monotonous increase, stationary‐Hncrease, increase^stationary, increase ►decrease, monotonous decrease, and other appearance patterns were compared for each ability type. At the same time, the similarity of these patterns was analyzed by principal component analysis to extract the general characteristics of the influence of age consciousness on abilities, and to discuss how these general characteristics were related to the personality of researchers, and to denote thoughts about the influence of aging on their research abilities and self‐efficacy. The survey was performed on 83 Japanese pharmaceutical companies. 3,450 questionnaires in total were delivered to the R & D department of each company according to corporate size. The number of respondents was 1,067 persons, recovered from 37 companies (recovery rate: 30.6%). From the results, the following points were identified. First, although Japanese enterprise researchers have been said to have a strong awareness of their limited abilities due to aging, this was not necessarily true; there were, however, differences seen within the different ability types. Second, we noted the two salient factors of growth vs. degradation and of determining the rapidity of growth, and each of these was intricately related to the respondents' way of thinking about the influence of aging on their research abilities and self efficacy. Third, as age increased, respondents tended to have a stronger consciousness of limited abilities due to aging and their career path (i.e., as researchers). Fourth, superior researchers who had already moved or were most probably going to move to research management functions tended to feel that their research lives were so much shorter.