Abstract
This study deals with the impression of creative occupations, e.g. artist, craftsman, artisan, designer, etc. The primary purpose of this paper is to identify the image of creative occupations in Japanese society. A second purpose is to compare the influence of two rating methods. The experiment in this investigation is the evaluation of two rating methods, the rating of each occupation (R(i):i=1, 2, …, N) by Semantic Differential technique and rating of paired presentation (R(i, j)) by the sorting method. The subjects are 81 students. First, 18 occupations of which 4 were creative were analyzed. The results given by the two rating methods were not the same. The sorting method forms three distinct groups, while the Semantic Differential technique only classified some occupations in to groups. The image of craftsmen gave different results in each method and could not be easily classified in any method. However, because many subjects have the same impression of craftsmen, it is clear that the impression of craftsmen is more unique. The image of artists, designers and craftsmen is best distinguished in terms of stability of lifestyle and innovativeness.
