Delineating Professional Competencies for Sociologists and other Health Social Scientists

Abstract

In order to ascertain which Social Science competencies were common across the disciplines of psychology, sociology, counselling and human services, employers with Queensland, and academics across Australia, were surveyed as to their views about a large number of generic and specialist competencies. The participants were asked to rate the competencies from the point of view of how necessary they considered it was for graduates to demonstrate these attributes on entry to the work force. This article gives details of the competencies that were common across the discipline groups, and notes the significant differences between sociology academics and other academic groups. It then compares each employer group with the combined Social Science employer group. Taking the pooled employer group as a benchmark, further comparisons are then made with sociology academics. Possible reasons for differences between the groups are discussed.