There have been a number of studies on reading interventions to improve students' reading proficiency, yet the majority of these interventions are undertaken with the assumption that students' reading challenges are obvious and generic in nature. The interventions do not take into consideration the diversity in students' reading backgrounds and the specific nature of the challenges. Thus interventions may not address students' specific reading needs. This paper reports on a study that explored students' reading profiles as a needs analysis for an intervention programme to improve the reading proficiency of first-year Sociology students. The aim was to investigate the students' reading backgrounds to determine their specific reading needs. A Likert scale questionnaire with an open-ended section was used to explore the students' reading profiles. The Likert scale questions were analysed quantitatively, while the open-ended questions were analysed qualitatively. In addition, a regression analysis was conducted to determine the correlation between students' use of strategies and their self-efficacy levels. The findings show that a number of students have little reading experience, use inappropriate reading strategies, and have low self-efficacy and poor reading habits. In addition, students identified comprehension, language, vocabulary, length and density of Sociology texts as factors compounding their reading challenges. This paper discusses the implications of these findings in designing an appropriate reading intervention programme for this cohort.