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SECTION THREE

ASSESSMENT AND

OCCUPATIONAL

INFORMAT ION

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CHAPTER 12

Assessment of Interests

Jo-Ida C. Hansen

OCATIONAL INTERESTS ARE

one of many variables included in most models of

career development and person-environment fit (P-E fit), and assessment of

interests is an integral ingredient in career counseling interventions. In

fact, vocational interests are the most frequently assessed construct in career coun-

seling. Ironically, then, identifying the origin of interests and developing precise

definitions of interests have been elusive tasks. Early in the history of interest

measurement, researchers such as E. K. Strong Jr., Leona Tyler, Ralph Berdie,

Wilbur Layton, and John Darley and Theda Hagenah all proposed definitions

(Berdie, 1944; Darley & Hagenah, 1955; Strong, 1943; Tyler, 1960). Their definitions

(and others that have followed them) generally incorporate both components of in-

terests and determinants. While many components of interests have been proposed,

three major components have been identified most often: personality, motivation

or drive, and self-concept. The two most widely cited determinants of interests are

nurture, which emphasizes socialization and learning and includes numerous en-

vironmental and psychological influences that are hypothesized to shape interests;

and nature, which emphasizes genetics and the heritability of interests.

Although theorists have made serious efforts to formulate definitions of inter-

ests, the construct has become, in many ways, synonymous with scores presented

on interest inventory profiles. In other words, interests frequently are regarded

simply as “what the test measures.” Within the context of interest assessment,

then, interests can be defined as a preference for activities expressed as likes or

dislikes (e.g., “I like golf” or “I dislike selling things”). Depending on the mea-

sure, the activities rated may include school subjects, occupational titles, and

other career-relevant stimuli.

INTERESTS AND VOCATIONAL THEORIES

The extent to which interests play a role in theories of career development and

P-E fit varies. For example, Super’s (1957) theory of vocational development, as

expanded by Savickas (Chapter 3, this volume), concentrates on “attitudes,

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com

petencies, and behaviors that individuals use in fitting themselves to work

that suits them.” This career construction theory (Savickas’s terminology) ac-

knowledges Holland’s typology as an operational definition of vocational per-

sonality that incorporates abilities, needs, values, and interests. While Savickas

acknowledges that assessing vocational personalities (including interests) can

be useful within career counseling, except during the growth stage little atten-

tion is paid at the theoretical level to interests or any of the other components of

vocational personality in career construction theory (i.e., abilities, values, and

needs). (See Savickas, Chapter 3, this volume, for a thorough description of the

developmental theory of career construction.)

Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT; Lent, Chapter 5, this volume) also em-

phasizes the impact that external forces (e.g., home, schools, peers) have on the

development of interests. However, SCCT places more emphasis on the mecha-

nisms involved in shaping or molding interests than does career construction the-

ory. As individuals try activities and receive feedback on their performance, they

develop both self-efficacy and outcome expectations about the activities. If, as a

result of feedback or self-evaluation, they view themselves as becoming compe-

tent, the “interest in the activity is likely to blossom and endure” (see Lent, Chap-

ter 5, this volume, for a thorough description of the SCCT model).

Gottfredson’s Theory of Circumscription and Compromise (L. Gottfredson,

1996), also a developmental model, views social class, sex, and intelligence as in-

fluences on a person’s self-concept as well as on compromises people face in

choosing their careers. Interests are viewed within this theory as just one of sev-

eral vocationally relevant elements that compose the self-concept. The theory sug-

gests that people often must compromise when they select a job. When asked to

choose among sex type (i.e., traditional or nontraditional for the person’s own

sex), prestige (e.g., high status versus low status), or occupational interests (e.g.,

a job that matches a person’s interests rather than one about which the person

feels indifferent) as the sacrificial lamb, the order of compromise will depend on

the relative magnitude of the compromise for each. Generally, when trade-offs are

small on all three dimensions, interests will be least likely to be sacrificed. When

moderate trade-offs among the three are required, people are least likely to sacri-

fice prestige. If major compromises are required, interests are most likely to be

compromised. (For more detail on circumscription and compromise, see L. Got-

tfredson, Chapter 4, this volume.)

As described by Dawis (Chapter 1, this volume), the theory of work adjustment

(TWA; Dawis & Lofquist, 1984) focuses on the way in which a person’s abilities

and values and their congruence, respectively, with an environment’s require-

ments and reinforcers predicts work outcomes (e.g., satisfaction, performance,

and tenure). Although TWA postulates do not specify the role of interests in work

adjustment, Dawis and Lofquist, the primary architects of TWA, do acknowledge

that vocational interests also predict satisfaction, performance, and tenure. (See

Dawis, Chapter 1, this volume, for a thorough description of the theory of work

adjustment.)

Among all vocational theories, John Holland’s theory of vocational personality

types focuses most explicitly on interests (Holland, 1997). He proposes that inter-

est personalities can be summarized as six types—Realistic, Investigative, Artis-

tic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional (RIASEC). He also postulates that the

relationship among these six types can be illustrated as an irregular hexagon with

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the types adjacent to one another on the hexagon having more characteristics in

common than types farther apart on the hexagon. Holland’s theory features inter-

ests as a reflection of personality. The notion that interests and personality share

common variance (i.e., are correlated) has been a popular hypothesis for decades.

However, Holland’s theory of vocational personality types provides a more com-

prehensive model of vocational interests and their relationship to career decision

making, satisfaction, and performance than those offered by other theorists, and

his work has driven much of the research that examines the relationship between

interests and personality. His theory has been used to organize the profiles of all

major interest inventories and to develop interpretive materials to accompany the

profiles; to provide a framework for integrating higher order abilities, personality,

values, interests, and needs; and to describe interests relative to people, work en-

vironments, and job tasks. (See Spokane & Cruza-Guet, Chapter 2, this volume, for

a thorough review of Holland’s theory.)

Most career theories, then, focus on the role that nurture plays in shaping and

developing interests. While none of the career theories explicitly deny that nature

(i.e., genes) plays a role in the origin of a person’s interests, they also do not

directly address the degree to which interests are determined by heritability of in-

terests. Behavior genetics studies, using twins as well as participants with other

kinships, allow research designs that tease apart genetic and nongenetic effects.

Especially informative research using twins reared together and apart supports a

combination of nature and nurture determinants of interests. One study, which

controlled for gender and age and used a large sample that included eight kinships,

showed a genetic effect of 36% (Betsworth et al., 1994). This same study identified

9% shared environmental effects (e.g., living in the same home) and an additional

55% nonshared environmental effects (e.g., having different friends) and measure-

ment error. This proportion of genetic and environmental effects is typical of

the results reported in other studies. In career counseling, then, it is useful to use a

model that incorporates both nature and nurture as important influences on the

development and shaping of interests. Such a model is consistent with the early ap-

pearance of interest choices in young children and the tremendous stability of in-

terests over the life span; it is also consistent with developmental and learning

theories of career development.

INTERESTS AND PERSONALITY

Several attempts have been made to understand the relation of interests and per-

sonality. Much of this research has focused on Holland’s six types and the five fac-

tor model (FFM) of personality, also known as the Big Five (Costa & McCrae,

1992a). Some research also has examined the relationship between Holland’s types

and Hogan’s personality dimensions of sociability and conformity (Hogan, 1983).

The general conclusion that can be drawn from this line of research is that there are

two or three personality and interest variables that share a modest amount of vari-

ance—Openness and Holland’s Investigative and Artistic interests; Extraversion

and Enterprising and Social interests; and, to a lesser extent, Agreeableness and

Holland’s Social interests. However, research examining the relations among lower

order personality facets (i.e., 30 NEO-PR-I facets; Costa & McCrae, 1992b), Hol-

land’s six personality types, and lower order interests (i.e., basic interest scales of

the Strong Interest Inventory; Harmon, Hansen, Borgen, & Hammer, 1994) suggests

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that once the associations between interests and personality facets are accounted

for, correlations between higher order personality factors such as the Big Five and

interests are negligible (Sullivan & Hansen, under review).

Thus, the vast majority of the relations between interests and personality that

have been examined, at both higher order levels (e.g., Holland types and the Big

Five) and lower order levels (e.g., basic interest scales and the 30 NEO Personality

Inventory facets) are relatively weak, and the evidence leads to the conclusion

that, for prediction and career counseling purposes, interests and personality

should not be treated as interchangeable constructs.

INTERESTS AND ABILITIES

Early models of career counseling typically attempted to match the abilities of

the client with the requirements of the job. Later, vocational assessment was ex-

panded from concentrating on the measurement of abilities to include assessment

of interests. For example, E. K. Strong Jr. (1943) suggested that “the relationship

among abilities, interests, and achievements may be likened to a motor boat with

a motor and a rudder. The motor (abilities) determines how fast the boat can go,

the rudder (interests) determines which way the boat goes” (p. 17). More recent

work (Achter, Lubinski, Benbow, & Eftekhari-Sanjani, 1999; Lubinski, 2000) has

supported Strong’s contention that interests add incremental validity beyond

ability to the prediction of educational and occupational choices and related out-

comes (e.g., satisfaction and success). As Strong (1927a) noted, “The majority of

[people] are practically equally fitted to enter a considerable number of occupa-

tions” (p. 297), and he later concluded (Strong, 1943):

Interests supply something that is not disclosed by ability and achievement.

...Counseling that considers both abilities and interests is distinctly superior to

that based on either alone, for it is in a position to establish both what the [person]

can do and what [she or he] wants to do. (p. 19)

STABILITY OF INTERESTS

Construct stability is an important prerequisite for any variable incorporated into

decision-making exercises such as those used in career counseling. This is espe-

cially true for interests since the stability of the construct is intertwined with the

reliability of the scores of the tests used to assess interests. If interests are not sta-

ble (in other words, if interests are a state rather than a trait), interest inventories

have no chance of predicting occupational or educational choices even over short

time spans. Based on the early work of E. K. Strong Jr. (1935, 1943) and on decades

of research since Strong’s early work, we know that interests are very stable over

time. In fact, interests may be the most stable of all psychological constructs. We

also know that the stability of interests depends on the age at Time 1 testing (the

younger the participants, the less stable the interests) and the length of the inter-

val between Time 1 and Time 2 testing (the longer the interval, the less stable the

interests).

Typically, the stability of interests is evaluated over set time periods (e.g., 3

years or 12 years or 22 years between Time 1 and Time 2 testing), and the stability

is expressed as a correlation between Time 1 and Time 2 scores. This approach

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looks at the stability of interests for a group, for example, college students tested as

freshmen and again as seniors. On average, for example, the stability coefficients

for individuals tested at age 18 and again at age 22 (4 years) and age 30 (12 years)

are about 0.80 and 0.70, respectively (Hansen & Swanson, 1983; Swanson &

Hansen, 1988). For those initially tested at age 33 and retested 12 years later at age

45, the stability coefficient increases to about 0.80 (Johansson & Campbell, 1971).

Thus, by age 20 interests are stable even over periods of 5 to 10 years, and by age 25

interests are very stable. This evidence of the stability of interests for individuals,

combined with evidence of test-retest reliability for an instrument, allows test

users to have confidence in test scores that are used to predict future behaviors

such as job or college major choice.

Occasionally, efforts also are made to look at the stability of an individual’s in-

terests. This approach typically correlates an individual’s profile scores for Time

1 with profile scores for Time 2 using either Pearson product-moment correla-

tions or correlations between rank-ordered profiles. The results from these

analyses are similar to those for examining the stability of interests of groups of

people. Generally, about 50% of individuals have Time 1 and Time 2 interest pro-

files that are substantially similar, and for many individuals the rank order cor-

relations are in the high 0.90s, over relatively long time periods (e.g., 15 years;

Hansen & Swanson, 1983; Lubinski, Benbow, & Ryan, 1995; Swanson & Hansen,

1988). However, these same studies illustrate that individual differences in inter-

est stability do occur. The intraperson correlations for a sample often range from

lows in the −.20s to highs in the +0.90s, illustrating that for some individuals dra-

matic changes in interests do occur over time.

Research also has been conducted to explore the extent to which the interests of

occupations change or remain stable over the decades. This knowledge is important

for determining the frequency with which interest inventories need to be revised.

Even in times of a quickly changing society and technology, studies show that in-

terests of people within a particular occupation (e.g., bankers, lawyers, foresters,

psychologists, engineers, reporters) are virtually identical over 40 or 50 years (D. P.

Campbell, 1966; Hansen, 1988).

W HY MEASURE INTERESTS?

Within the counseling intervention framework, interests may be assessed for a

number of reasons, with the goal of helping individuals to make informed occu-

pational and educational choices. First and foremost, measured interests (re-

ported as scores on interest inventory profiles) can be used by counselors to

guide the development of hypotheses about clients. These hypotheses, in turn,

may be used to guide career exploration and to provide clients with a fresh

per

spective and new information. For clients, the profile scores promote self-

understanding by various means: identifying previously unknown interests,

broadening occupational possibilities for some people and narrowing choices for

others, or simply confirming career choices (Hansen, 1994). Although expressed

and inventoried interests show similar evidence of predictive validity for occu-

pation and college major choices, many individuals who must make career and

educational choices are undecided. For these clients, the scores on interest inven-

tories can serve as powerful stimuli for jump-starting the exploration process

and for developing career ideas and possibilities.

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