Outline

1
Outline

1. Career counseling until recently, unnecessary
2. What changed?
3. Measuring vocational interests
4. Issues in measurement
5. Trait factor approach
6. Other approaches

2
Career counseling until recently, unnecessary

• Until about 100 years ago, this concept (career
  counseling) didnt exist
• If you were a boy, your job was what your
  fathers job had been which was specified by
  your surname or you could join the army

• If you were a girl, you would become someones
  wife or servant

3
What changed?

• Agricultural equipment

• Fewer workers needed on farms because new
  machines vastly increased productivity
• So people who would have been farm workers needed
  something else to do

4
What changed?

• Industrial revolution

• More workers needed in cities, where they lost
  touch with their ancestral occupations
• Jobs involving machinery were mentally
  challenging so some people were more suited than
  others to a given task

5
What changed?

• 19th and early 20th C immigration to North
  America from Europe

• Immigrants lost touch with ancient lifestyles,
  fathers occupations
• Immigrants were likely to be people who were not
  afraid of change

6
What changed?

• Late 1800s roads leading from rural areas into
  cities built throughout USA and Canada

• Built by large railroads, so people could get
  from farms into cities, thus to train stations
  for inter-city travel
• Side effect these roads let rural children get
  to city schools to be educated

7
Career counseling why is it necessary?

• While all this was going on, North Americans were
  becoming more productive and thus wealthier

• They could afford to educate their children
• They could also afford to develop a psychological
  testing industry to guide career choices
• Guidance needed because choice of careers
  ballooned

8
Frank Parsons (1854 1908)

• Created the profession of vocational counselor
• First proponent of matching people to occupations
  by comparing persons aptitude and skills
  occupation demands
• Opened first counseling office, in Boston (1908)

9
Frank Parsons (1854 1908)

• Three principles we still use today

• Satisfying careers are most likely to be selected
  if you know your own strengths and weaknesses

10
Frank Parsons (1854 1908)

• Three principles we still use today

• Satisfying careers are most likely to be selected
  if you understand the challenges particular
  careers present and the skills they demand.

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Frank Parsons (1854 1908)

• Three principles we still use today

• It is not enough to know your strengths and to
  know an occupations demands you must also
  match the two carefully and honestly.

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Online resources you might find useful

• ONet Online
• Myskillsprofile
• Jackson Vocational Interest Survey
• Career Centre at Western

13
Measuring vocational interests

• The Strong Vocational Interest Blank (SVIB)
• The Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory (SCII)
• Hollands RIASEC Codes
• The Campbell Interest and Skill Survey (CISS)
• Kuder Occupational Interest Survey (KOIS)
• Jackson Vocational Interest Survey (JVIS)

14
Cautionary notes

• Interests vs. abilities
• Holland interests are determined by personality
• Clinical vs. actuarial judgment
• Meehl clinical is better

• Traits vs. situations

15
Strong Vocational Interest Blank

• Edward Strong (1884 1963)
• B.S. (Biology) 1906 UC
• Ph.D. 1911 (Columbia)

• Professor at Stanford from 1923
• Vocational Interests of Men and Women (1944)

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"When I began working on interest measurement,"
Dr. Strong once remarked, "no one believed you
could build scales to measure interests, or that
such scales would yield any kind of stable
scores. As a matter of fact, I didn't really
believe it myself until I had been working on my
test for several years. Each time we got a new
occupational group tested, I fully expected to
discover that we couldn't differentiate it on an
interest basis, and that the whole concept of
interest measurement would fall apart "What
really convinced me emotionally that we had
something was a personal experience. My son had
been an indifferent student in college and had no
idea what he wanted to do vocationally. He took
my test and came out with an A on Physician, an
occupation he had never considered entering.
Well, he went to medical school, got straight A's
throughout, and has been a dedicated and
successful physician ever since. I began to think
maybe we had a method that would really help
young people find where they belonged." Strong
(1944) (emphasis added)
17
Strong Vocational Interest Blank

• First published in 1927 with 420 items reflecting
  10 Occupational Scales
• New editions in 1938 and 1946

• 1960 Basic Interest scales added
• 1974 Holland Codes added
• 1994 Strong Interest Inventory (now 317 items)

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Strong Vocational Interest Blank

• Criterion keying begin by identifying
  activities liked or disliked by people in
  different occupations
• Patterns of interest remain stable over time

• Do some interests mark an occupation? If so,
  interests can be used to guide career choice

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Strong Vocational Interest Blank

• Basic Interest Scale
• Identifies groups of occupations that share some
  qualities that you might be interested in
• Gives a general direction e.g., You should
  work with people

• Occupational Scale
• 211 occupations
• Separate scales for men and women

20
Strong Vocational Interest Blank

• Personal Style Scale
• Prefer to work alone or with people?
• Practical knowledge or learning for its own sake?

• Personal Style Scale
• Careful or quick decision making?
• Risk-taking?
• Team orientation (achieve goals by working with
  others)?

21
Strong Vocational Interest Blank

• Criticisms
• Sex bias?
• No theory

• Strengths
• High reliability Internal consistency
  reliability in high .80s
• Test-retest reliability (up to 6 months between
  tests) in .80s

22
Strong Vocational Interest Blank

• Strengths
• High validity

• Assesses interests among a wide variety of
  hobbies, academic subjects, work activities,
  occupations
• Sample for comparisons includes impressive
  variety of ethnic, social, and educational
  backgrounds

23
Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory

• Campbell continued development of Strongs SVIB

• Most widely used interest test
• No sex bias
• Includes J. L. Hollands theory of vocational
  choice.

24
Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory

• Test taker responds to each item Like, Dislike,
  or Indifferent

• Yields 4 different scores
• Hollands Personality Types
• Administration
• Basic Interests
• Occupational

25
Hollands RIASEC Codes

• Holland Occupational interests reflect
  interaction between personality and environment.

• "People search for environments that will let
  them exercise their skills and abilities, express
  their attitudes and values, and take on agreeable
  problems and roles." (Holland, 1997)

26
Hollands RIASEC Codes

• Holland 6 personality types

• Realistic
• Investigative
• Artistic
• Social
• Enterprising
• Conventional

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Hollands RIASEC Codes

• Holland another set of labels that may help you
  remember the different types

• Doer (R)
• Thinker (I)
• Creator (A)
• Helper (S)
• Persuader (E)
• Organizer (C)

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Hollands RIASEC Codes

• Realistic

• Less social
• Like the outdoors
• Like manual activities
• Physically robust
• Practical
• Non-intellectual

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Hollands RIASEC Codes

• Investigative

• Interested in ideas more than people
• Not very social
• Dislikes emotional situations
• Appears aloof

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Hollands RIASEC Codes

• Artistic

• Creative
• Enjoys developing ideas
• Enjoys expression
• Dislikes conformity
• Comfortable with ambiguity
• Not especially skilled socially

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Hollands RIASEC Codes

• Social

• Likes to work with other people
• Helping orientation
• Nurturing

32
Hollands RIASEC Codes

• Enterprising

• People oriented
• Goal oriented
• Good at coordinating work of others

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Hollands RIASEC Codes

• Conventional

• Does best in highly structured situations and
  jobs
• Good with details
• Likes clerical tasks, working with numbers
• Doesnt like working with ideas or people

34
The Campbell Interest and Skill Survey

• 1992
• Also uses Hollands theoretical structure

• Extroversion and academic focus scales
• Assesses skill as well as interest

35
The Campbell Interest and Skill Survey

• Depending on combination of degree of interest
  and skill, the test-taker is advised to

• Pursue (high interest, high skill)
• Develop (HI,LS)
• Explore (LI,HS)
• Avoid (LI,LS)

36
Kuder Occupational Interest Survey

• Second most widely used interest test
• Criterion keying method

• Measure 100 triads of alternative activities
• For each triad, test-taker selects most/least
  preferred

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Kuder Occupational Interest Survey

• Dependability
• Interest Scores

• Relation of interest patterns to norms of men and
  women

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Kuder Occupational Interest Survey

• Occupation Scores

• Relation to scores of men and women employed and
  satisfied in certain occupations

39
Kuder Occupational Interest Survey

• College major scores

• Relation to scores of students in different
  college majors

40
Jackson Vocational Interest Survey

• Douglas Jackson (-) was for many years a
  professor in the Department of Psychology at UWO

41
Jackson Vocational Interest Survey

• Matches people to academic or career fields based
  on their interests
• 289 pairs of statements describe job activities
• Forced choice for each pair

• Does not compare scores to those of people happy
  in their occupation
• Yields 34 basic interest scores
• Predicts university majors more accurately than
  most inventories

42
Jackson Vocational Interest Survey

• Basic Interest Scales some examples (not a
  complete list)

• Creative Arts
• Physical Science
• Engineering
• Life Science
• Social Science
• Adventure
• Nature-Agriculture
• Skilled Trades

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Jackson Vocational Interest Survey

• General occupational themes (G.O.T.)

• Assertive
• Communicative
• Conventional
• Enterprising
• Expressive
• Helping
• Inquiring
• Logical
• Practical
• Socialized

44
JVIS Basic Interest Scales Reliability

• Internal consistency reliability (alpha) ? .54 to
  .88.

• Test-retest reliability (4 to 6 weeks) ? .69 to
  .92.

45
JVIS G.O.T. Reliability

• Internal consistency reliability (alpha) ? .70 to
  92.

• Test-retest reliability (4 to 6 weeks) ? .83 to
  .93

46
Minnesota Vocational Interest Inventory

• Criterion keying, no theoretical base
• Aimed at men not oriented towards college

• Emphasizes skilled/semi-skilled trades
• Yields basic interest and occupational scores

47
The Career Assessment Inventory

• Intended purpose similar to that of MVII
• 6th grade reading level

• Sex- and culture-bias free
• Includes Hollands theoretical base
• Scores on scales similar to SCII and CISS

48
The Career Assessment Inventory

• Vocational version
• 305 items, 91 occupations that require little
  post-secondary education

• Enhanced version
• 370 items, 111 occupations including some that
  require significant post-secondary education

49
The Self Directed Approach

• Self administered, scored, interpreted
• Rate skill and interest in occupational areas

• Linked to an occupation finder
• Accurate scoring
• Lets user develop a personal career theory

50
Issues in Interest Measurement

• Sex bias
• Leads people to sex-typed careers
• But elimination might mean lower validity
• Most scales today have reduced bias

• We should examine tests for sex bias and try to
  remove it if found, but
• Women and men are different in a variety of
  psychological and physiological ways
• Differences in which careers are suggested may
  not result from bias

51
Issues in Interest Measurement

• Note the difference between data and
  interpretation
• Data some tests suggest different occupations
  for men and women

• Interpretation 1 men and women genuinely differ
  in interests and thus in preferred occupations
• Interpretation 2 the test is biased
• Either or both might be true

52
Issues in Interest Measurement

• Interests vs. aptitudes

• E.g., in Strong inventories, how successful in
  their occupations are the norm groups expressing
  particular interests?

53
Issues in Interest Measurement

• Development
• Does it matter for testing that people change in
  ways relevant to occupational success?

• Personality is stable over the lifetime
• But other things motivation, education,
  environment will surely change and interests
  may change with them

54
Osipows trait-factor approach

• Goal is to learn about persons overall traits,
  not just their interests

• Battery of tests covering
• Personality
• Ability / Aptitudes
• Interests
• Values

55
Supers Developmental Theory

• Suitability for a career is not static
• Developmental stages define what vocational
  behavior is expected of us

• Vocational maturity is defined as the correlation
  between actual and expected vocational behavior
• Actual comes from developmental stage youre in

56
Supers Developmental Theory

• Super (1954) Theory of vocational choice
  lifespan developmental process

1. Crystallization
2. Specification
3. Implementation
4. Stabilization
5. Consolidation
6. Ready to retire

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Ginzberg et al. (1951)

• Ginzberg et al. (1951) career choice is the
  outcome of a developmental path from childhood to
  young adulthood stages

• Fantasy
• Tentative
• Realistic
• Exploration
• Crystallization
• Specification

58
Roes Career Choice Theory

• Roe career choice a result of type of
  relationship you had with your family while
  growing up

• Relationship success leaves you with a
  person-orientation
• Relationship failure, leaves you with a
  non-person orientation

59
Roes Career Choice Theory

• As a result of rearing, some people are oriented
  towards other people

• they were reared in a warm, accepting environment

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Roes Career Choice Theory

• As a result of rearing, some people are oriented
  towards things

• they were reared in a cold, aloof environment.
• Characteristics measured by California
  Occupational Preference Survey (COPS)

61
Caution

• Text, p. 472
• Despite the availability of many interest
  inventories, old-fashioned clinical skill remains
  an important asset in career-counseling.

• There is lots of evidence that this claim is not
  true in the work of Paul Meehl and others on
  clinical vs. actuarial judgment