A Descriptive Comparison of Gender Representations in Kazakh Word Associations from 2014 and 2024
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Objective: To compare lexical associations with woman and man in two Kazakh-language sources and clarify the psychological inferences supported by the available material.
Methods and Materials: Printed inventories attributed to the 2014 Kazakh Associative Dictionary and a 2024 free association experiment were examined using frequency accounting, identical descriptive salience bands, and exclusive lexical-occurrence categories. Response forms were normalized without pooling synonyms, translations, or spelling variants. Sample comparability and coding documentation were evaluated.
Findings: Family and relational vocabulary occurs in both sources. Mother is the highest listed woman response in each, while the highest listed man response changes from head of the family to woman. Several rights-related and critical labels in 2024 occur only once or twice. Printed-frequency sums are 582 and 607 for the earlier woman and man inventories and 566 and 563 for 2024. These do not reconcile with reported totals, including 575 responses across both 2024 stimuli. Participant counts, valid denominators, missingness, and independent coding reliability remain unverified.
Conclusion: The inventories provide descriptive evidence of lexical recurrence and non-overlap, generating hypotheses about culturally situated gender representations. They do not establish statistically supported attitude change, widespread polarization, or effects of legislation and media. Reconciled records, comparable sampling, and transparent coding are required for reliable diachronic inference.
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