Methodological Description of Studying the Psychological Mechanisms of Students’ Professional Identity

Gulzoda Kamilova

doi:10.57033/mijournals-2026-3-0351

Keywords

professional identity psychological mechanisms students methodology mixed- methods design psychometric adaptation

Abstract

The formation of professional identity is a central developmental task of the student years, yet the psychological mechanisms behind it remain unevenly operationalized in empirical research. This paper outlines a methodological framework for studying these mechanisms in university students. It justifies the theoretical foundations, the research design, the instruments and the analytic strategy needed to obtain valid and reproducible results, and it sets out in sequence the stages of data preparation, psychometric verification, group comparison, correlation, regression, the testing of mechanisms by structural equation modelling and mediation analysis, the thematic analysis of qualitative material and the integration of the two kinds of data.

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