The Study of How Students of Sociology Department Picture a Sociologist, with the Use of Projective Techniques

<p style="text-align: justify;">Forming of professional identity is an important part of professional development, a significant part of which takes place in process of university education. Students of sociology department, as well as other students, feel the need to acquire think through this identity which is inseparable from the knowledge and the image of the profession itself. But future sociologists feel particularly hard pressure in this case, because the image of sociologist in the society is rather blurry, job placement and proper help in realization of its nature is usually not among many very important aspects covered by university, job market does not frequently involve sociologists per se (instead it is full with marketing specialists and analysts), so even the position of occupational title is doubtful. Naturally, professional identification develops in students&rsquo; minds in one way or another, but due to the this particular situation its verbalization, necessary for actual realization, is rather problematic. One of the ways to reveal underlying attitudes is projective techniques, which is applied in current study.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The goal of this paper is to study how do the students of sociology department picture a sociologist.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The empirical database of this survey is 16 semi-structured interviews with the use of projective techniques, conducted in spring 2014. Students of sociology department of HSE were interviewed. The methodological foundation of data analysis lies in the use of elements of grounded theory (coding and memo-writing).</p><p style="text-align: justify;">As the result of data analysis, key features of sociologist, common for all of the standpoints, were extracted, as well as some characteristics that lead us to the conclusion that there are several views on what a sociologist is like.</p>