Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences

Career Choice and Career Transition

 Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences

• A whole world of tests is available to help in various phases of career choice.

• There are tests to survey interests, aptitudes, skills, or special talents.
• There are tests to measure attitudes toward work, confidence in one’s skills,
assumptions about careers, perceptions regarding career barriers, even dysfunctional
career thoughts.
• Historically, one variable considered closely related to occupational fulfillment and
success is personal interests.
• An individual’s interests may be sufficiently solidified by age 15 that they can be
useful in career planning (Care, 1996). Further, the odds are that these interests will
be fairly stable over time (Savickas & Spokane, 1999).
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Measures of Interest
• Assuming that interest in one’s work promotes better performance, greater
productivity, and greater job satisfaction, both employers and prospective employees
should have much to gain from methods that can help individuals identify their
interests and jobs tailored to those interests.
• Using such methods, individuals can discover, for example, whether their interests
lie in commanding a starship while “seeking new worlds and exploring new
civilizations” or something more along the lines of cosmetic dentistry.
• We may formally define an interest measure in the context of vocational assessment
and pre-employment counseling as an instrument designed to evaluate test takers’
likes, dislikes, leisure activities, curiosities, and involvements in various pursuits for
the purpose of comparison with groups of members of various occupations and
professions.
 Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences

• Employers can use information about their employees’ interest patterns to formulate
job descriptions and attract new personnel.
• For example, a company could design an employment campaign emphasizing job
security if job security were found to be the chief interest of the successful workers
currently holding similar jobs.
• Although there are many instruments designed to measure interests, we focus on the
Strong Interest Inventory (SII).
 Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences
Strong Interest Inventory

• One of the first measures of interest was published in 1907 by psychologist G.

Stanley Hall.
• His questionnaire was designed to assess children’s interest in various recreational
pursuits.
• It was not until the early 1920s that Edward K. Strong Jr., inspired by a seminar he
attended on the measurement of interest, began a program of systematic investigation
in this area.
• His efforts culminated in a 420-item test he called the Strong Vocational Interest
Blank (SVIB).
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• Test items probe personal preferences in a variety of areas such as occupations,

school subjects, and activities.
• Respondents answer each of these questions on a five-point continuum that ranges
from “strongly like” to “strongly dislike.”
• Nine items in a “Your Characteristics” section contain items like “win friends
easily”; respondents select an answer on a five-point continuum that ranges from
“strongly like me” to “strongly unlike me.”
• Each protocol is computer scored and interpreted, yielding information on the test
taker’s personal style, basic interests, and other data useful in determining how
similar or dissimilar the respondent’s interests are to those of people holding a
variety of jobs.
 Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences
Other interest inventories

• In addition to the SII, many other interest inventories are now in

widespread use.
• The Self-Directed Search (SDS). The SDS explores interests within the
context of Holland’s (1997) theory of vocational personality types and
work environments.
• According to this theory, vocational choice is an expression of one of six
personality types: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising,
or Conventional. These personality types are variously referred to simply
as the “Big 6” or by the acronym “RIASEC.”
 Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences

• Another interest inventory is the Minnesota Vocational Interest Inventory.

• Empirically keyed, this instrument was expressly designed to compare respondents’
interest patterns with those of persons employed in a variety of nonprofessional
occupations (such as stock clerks, painters, printers, and truck drivers).
• Other measures of interest have been designed for use with people who have one or
another deficit or disability. For example, interest inventories for testtakers who do
not read well will typically employ drawings and other visual media as stimuli
(Elksnin & Elksnin, 1993).
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• In one study, interest and aptitude measures were found to correlate in a range of about .40 to .72 (Lam et al.,
1993).
• In another study examining the accuracy with which interest and aptitude tests predict future job performance and
satisfaction, Bizot and Goldman (1993) identified people who had been tested in high school with measures of
vocational interest and aptitude.

• Eight years later, these individuals reported on their satisfaction with their jobs, even permitting the researchers
to contact their employers for information about the quality of their work.

• The researchers found that when a good match existed between a subject’s aptitude in high school and the level
of his or her current job, performance was likely to be evaluated positively by the employer. When a poor match
existed, a poor performance rating was more likely.
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• The extent to which employees were themselves satisfied with their jobs was not related to aptitudes
as measured in high school. As for predictive validity, the interest tests administered in high school
predicted neither job performance nor job satisfaction eight years later. The results of this and related
studies (e.g., Jagger et al., 1992) sound a caution to counselors regarding overreliance on interest
inventories. Concern has also been expressed about differential item functioning in interest tests
(particularly the Strong) as a function of gender (Einarsdóttir & Rounds, 2009).

• It has also been well established that, generally speaking, men and women tend to have different
interests (Su et al., 2009). Some research suggests that the predictive efficiency of interest measures
may be enhanced if they are used in combination with other measures such as measures of confidence
and self-efficacy (Chartrand et al., 2002; Rottinghaus et al., 2003), personality (Larson & Borgen,
2002; Staggs et al., 2003), or a portfolio project (Larkin et al., 2002).