Conceptualizing your research helps you with literature review, research design and analysis

The overall aim of this thesis is to contribute to the understanding of the intelligence analysis profession by focusing on the collective and individual professional identity of practitioners in this field. A conceptual framework was designed to serve as a “map” (James & Slater, 2017) to frame and visualise the research objectives and the interlinking constructs in the literature review. The framework is also useful to explain the research design and methods used in this study.

The conceptual framework firstly represents a globe, which indicates the international perspective of the research study. The objective of the research was first and foremost to determine whether there exists an emerging profession in the security risk discipline for analysts on an international level. If so, the second objective was to determine whether there is a collective identity (the outer circle) of security risk intelligence analysts in the private sector on an international level, with the research objectives related to this namely:

1. Is there a shared professional identity across nationalities?

2. Is there a shared professional identity across organisational forms?

3. Is there a shared ideology and values of the profession?

4. Is there a shared perception on how others perceive the target group?

The third research objective was to explore the individual professional identity of security risk intelligence analysts in the private sector (the inner circle). Research questions on this level included the following:

5. How do intelligence analysts conceptualise their professional identity?

6. What is the perceived unique contribution of intelligence analysis in the private security sector?

7. How do intelligence analysts believe they are perceived by others?

8. What do intelligence analysts perceive as the opportunities and challenges inherent with their profession?

9. What experiences and conditions do intelligence analysts perceive as contributing to or strengthening of their professional identities?

10. Is there a difference in the individual professional identity of analysts from different countries?

The dotted line between the two circles represents the interrelatedness or reciprocity of aspects of collective and individual professional identities, as opposed to a solid line which would have indicated that there is a definite separation between the two “levels” of professional identity.

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