Professionals sought to complete long-running study
University of Queensland researchers are anxious to track about 400 Australian lawyers, doctors and engineers who may have moved address so they can bring one of the world's longest-running research projects to a close.
A research team headed by Emeritus Professor John Western, of the University's Social and Economic Research Centre and Anthropology and Sociology Department, is mailing 1000 questionnaires to people who have been participating in an Australian Research Grants Committee-funded study of The Professions in Australia since1965.
The unique project was the first systematic investigation of the characteristics of professions in Australia and has gathered a great deal of data, published in more than 20 papers and three research monographs.
"Very few studies, apart from those conducted since the 1930s, and 1940s on the development of intelligence in young children, have continued over such a long time frame," Professor Western said.
Professor Western said the first phase of the study in the 1960s had focused on how recruits to the professions acquired the values, dispositions, preferences and practices which characterised the professions they sought to enter.
The second stage of the study in the 1980s looked at the qualifications obtained and the proportion who had additional qualifications. The study also looked at careers in the professions, gender differences and attitudes to a variety of issues confronting the professions.
The current study would seek further information about experiences of professional work and how it had changed over the past 20 to 35 years.
Information from the current project phase will be incorporated in a book to be published in the year 2000. This will analyse the data of the past 30 years and improve understanding of the professions.
"We believe this is an important task," Professor Western said.
"The professions have an increasingly important role to play in society, yet the Hilmer Report and similar documents are suggesting changes in the control of professional work. These are controversial, such as allowing para-professionals greater access to clients and fields of work.
"In the context of considering the role of the professions in the 21st century, it will be enormously helpful to hear from professionals themselves, and their views about the future of the professions."
The researchers have already received 500 responses from 600 current known addresses in the current phase, but are still attempting to track 400 professionals and project participants to their new addresses.
In recognition of the country's coming centenary of self-government, Australian National University is supporting the new wave of data collection as part of a major research program called the Reshaping Australian Institutions Project.
The data collection also includes a component funded by the General Practice Evaluation Program of the Commonwealth Department of Health to gain information about the experiences of medical practitioners in rural practice.
Professor Western's research team includes Dr Toni Makkai, a senior research officer of the Australian Institute of Criminology who completed her PhD on the original professions study; University of Queensland research assistant and PhD student Catherine Dwan; and UQ PhD student Julie Macmillan
Professor Western said practitioners in engineering, law and medicine first contacted in 1965 were being asked to fill in one final questionnaire.
This would include questions on how valuable they had found their training, as viewed from a mature perspective; their attitudes on government deregulation; regulating the professions; how their beliefs and attitudes on a variety of issues had changed over time; and how they were coping with the new social and economic realities.
Respondents will also be sent a booklet describing the study findings to date.
People wishing to contact the researchers can telephone 07 3365 4554.
