Chapter 16: Interest Testing
• Measurement of vocational interest
• 4 interest tests
o Strong Interest Inventory (SII)
▪ One of the oldest tests
o Kuder Occupational Interest Survey (KOIS)
▪ Represents divergent test construction philosophy
o Career Assessment Inventor (CAI)
▪ Ability to measure interest of people at lower socioeconomic levels in our
society
o Jackson Vocational Interest Survey (JVIS)
▪ New
▪ Handscoreable
• Each test Is discussed from the same basic four perspectives: purpose, manner of
construction, psychometric characteristics and applications in both counseling and
industrial settings
The Strong Interest Inventory
• Strong original believed the way to build an interest inventory was to contrast responses
of a specific occupation criterion group to those of a nonspecific, people-in-general group
to identify a unique set of items that differentiated the two groups
• He administered his inventory to works of various occupations and then compared them
to a general reference group
• Workers he chose had to be satisfied with their jobs and had to be employed for a
minimum of at least three years
• If he found that items were significantly preferred by a group of artist workers, for
example (“I like to attend symphony concerts”) than the general reference group, he put
them on a scale (i.e. artist scale)
o Did the same if an item was significantly disliked by group, for example if the
artists significantly marked the item “I like math” less than the reference group it
was also included because it still distinguished artists from the reference group
• Essential characteristic of occupational scale items is that they were designed to
differentiate the interest of occupational groups from those of a general reference group
o Items strongly preferred or rarely liked by both occupational group and general
ref group weren’t included on occupational scale
• Strong concluded that as the similarity between the members of occupational groups and
the general reference group increased, the discriminating power of the test increased
• SII provides better separation among business and professional occupations than it does
among occupations at lower socioeconomic levels
• Current SII consists of 317
• Administrative indexes
o Reveal info about the type and pattern of choices made by the examinee
o Designed to alert the counselor to possible interpretive problems that might
moderate the validity of the results of greatly reduce their usefulness
o Total response indicator: scale that signals the number of items accurately rea by
the scoring machine
▪ If number of items omitted is very large, the validity of results is doubtful
▪ Second validity indicator
• Number of infrequent responses marked on the test provides a
check for proper completion of the inventory
• Inconsistency in answers
▪ Response distribution matrix indicating the percentages of “like,”
“indifferent” and “dislike’ responses enables the counselor to detect other
interpretaive problems.
• Personality style scales
o Work style scale
▪ Differentiate those who like to have substantial interpersonal contact in
their work from those who prefer to work more with data, ideas and things
o Learning environment scale
▪ Whether examinees’ interests are similar to those of people who persist in
formal academic settings and pursue advanced educational and
professional degrees
o Leadership style scale
▪ Represents an attempt to assess the type of leadership role that people
would like to have in their work setting
o Risk-taking adventure scale
▪ Assess preferences for physical risk and adventure
• General occupational theme scales
o Categorize occupations into some system
