Empirical Study of the Structure of Future Police Specialists’ Professional Self-Awareness

Abstract

The article discusses the issue of effective training for crime prevention and detection among Ukrainian police officers. Notably, it requires professional knowledge and skills to be developed at a certain level, which means the need for high professional development and a certain level of self-awareness. Thus, training, retraining, and morale of the future specialist are some of the determinatives for the successful completion of the missions that police encounter. Special features of the professional identity of the future police specialist have not been defined and structured yet. The purpose of this study is to highlight the empirical study on professional self-awareness findings, which cover its content and structure, as well as to analyse the authorial model of content and structural components of professional self-awareness among future police professionals that was developed for studies in higher educational institutions. The study analysed the problem of future police officers’ professional identity and devotion to the organisation. The main research methods included the methods of S. Schwartz’s theory of basic human values; methods of R. Cattell’s 16 personality factor model; methods A. Rean and V. Yakunin’s diagnostics of the motives of students’ learning in modification of N. Badmaeva; methods of V. Stephenson’s “Q-sorting” in diagnosing the main trends of behaviour in a real group and ideas about themselves; A. Zverkova and E. Eidman’s test of volitional self-control; R. Schwarzer and M. Jerusalem’s scales of general self-efficacy; methods of N. Hall’s emotional intelligence diagnostics, analysis of the collected data. As a result, during the period of professional training in accordance with the programme methodology established by the authors, future police officers of the control sample developed such personal and social qualities as work capacity, proactivity, respect for social norms and adherence to them.