The contribution of students' cognitive features and motivation to ensuring their research achievements is sufficiently defined but the role of their subjective representations and personality characteristics is not studied enough. The study posed the questions: are there distinctions in students' attitudes toward different stages of a research work; what personality traits and values lead to preferences or underestimation of certain stages of a research? Questionnaire for students with seven 10-point scales for the assessment of different stages of research, The Big Five Personality Test (5PFQ), Rokeach Value Survey (RVS), mathematical methods (descriptive analysis, Kendall correlation coefficient, and Mann-Whitney U test) were applied to evaluate the study objectives. The sample consisted of 75 4th year students of St. Petersburg State University (mean age 22.9 +/- 1.3). The study revealed the ambivalent attitude of students to the stages of scientific work involves planning of tasks, problem statement and