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This article examines certain aspects of the formation of an occupational identity through the use of small-group analysis. The notion of identity has been a particularly fruitful concept in the analysis of occupational roles where it is seen to be of strategic importance in assimilating a rhetoric appropriate to such roles. A technique known as relational analysis attempts to bridge the gap [between qualitative description and analysis of a community, organization, or other social unit, and survey research which samples and analyzes individual responses qua individual] by treating separate interviews as parts of a complex structure, rather than atomistically. The data for this study comprise the responses of 324 medical students at an Eastern university. When viewed in the senior year, at which time the development of a medical identity is presumed to be essentially complete, we have consistent large differences in values for every characteristic, with the values for "skill at diagnosis" greater in magnitude than those for "most friendly," which are in most instances around zero. When viewed in the freshman year, at which the medical identity is still amorphous, there are no consistent differences between hw or the index of homogeity values for these two descriptions.

This article discusses a rationale for the study of the work drama. In work organizations the most obvious marks of status are those attached to performances. These titles are partially descriptive of the work done. Such distinctions are the stuff of which lectures in introductory sociology are made, but they represent that point at which transition from macroscopic to microscopic analysis of work situations might profitably be made, for as soon as we begin to focus on the individual in the work situation we must perform become psycho-sociological, This is not, of course, a concern with the individual in an isolated, virtually feral, sense but with the role relations of the individual. It is this interest with individual role relations on the job that has received the name, first coined by Hughes, of the work drama. And the theatrical analogy is really quite apt for. Hence, in looking at the action which takes place upon this stage, we may approach the work drama on several levels. The extensive work situation involves interaction in the complex of work situations within the total organization and with institutions and associations outside both the work site and the organization in which the work is performed.