Hall's Professionalism Scale: An Empirical Reassessment

Abstract

A growing number of sociologists seek to determine appropriate criteria and measurement of individuals' professional standing. One notable attempt in this regard has been the professionalism scale recently developed and employed by Richard Hall. Using Likert scaling procedures, Hall measured five attitudinal components of professionalism: use of the professional organization as a major referent, belief in public service, belief in self regulation, sense of calling to the field, and a feeling of autonomy. By using rotated factor matrices, I assessed the empirical fit of Hall's items as they relate to each of the five above theoretical dimensions of professionalism. I suggest how such a fit might be improved. I consider the near term desirability of using a shorter version of Hall's original scale for both stratified and total scale reliability. The data analyzed are those of vastly diverse study populations collected by both Hall and me.