The research objective of this study is to contrast professional competencies across multiple disciplines.
This research theme is at the early stages of development, and interested parties are welcome to join.
The research involves several stages.
Stage 1: Identify common interests of professionalism across a variety of professions.
This is done by finding and examining the codes of professional conduct for the professions, and seeking common themes.
The literature for each professional competencies (PC) and graduate attributes (GA) is briefly reviewed for each profession, to establish existing PCs and GAs.
Semantic analysis is applied to the above inputs using qualitative research methods, specifically NVivo to determine (a) professional common constructs (PCCs), and (b) profession specific constructs. Only the PCCs are taken forward for further analysis.
Stage 2: Design of survey
The target audience is practising professionals, as opposed to students, and the survey is designed accordingly.
The survey is designed with three blocks of questions: demographic variables; responses to the PCCs; free text fields. The survey was designed to capture ordered variables, e.g. Likert Scales.
[ ]Face validity is checked
[ ] Ethics application is obtained from the University of Canterbury.
[ ] The survey is implemented in software (Qualtrics) using tokens for longitudinal purposes.
Target recipients were obtained by contacting the various professional bodies and asking them to email the survey to members. The following professional bodies were approached:
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Stage 3: Analysis of Survey results
[ ] Quantitative statistical analysis is conducted using Statistica/R to compare and contrast the responses. Ordinal variables are given numeric scales and analysed primarily with ANOVA and regression methods.
[ ] Optionally structural path method is applied
[ ] Findings are consolidated and a paper written. The original intellectual contribution is the identification of PCCs, and the results (compare and contrast) for trans-professional attitudes towards these.
Stage 4: Interviews
[ ] Qualitative analysis is undertaken on the free text from the survey. This is used to inform the interviews
[ ] A set of questions is derived for semi-structured interviews.
[ ] Ethics approval is updated as necessary.
[ ] Respondents are identified from the survey and interviewed using video conferencing.
[ ] Qualitative methods are used on all the above semantic data, to extract common themes.
[ ] Common themes are interpreted into a theory of mind for professionalism generally.
[ ] Findings are consolidated and a paper written. The original intellectual contribution is the mental model that underpins the PCCs.
Stage 5: Longitudinal study
[ ] methods are repeated annually, and reanalysed.
[ ] survey questions are curated
[ ] other questions are added