Psychometric Characteristics of a Public-Domain Self-Report Measure of Vocational Interests: The Oregon Vocational Interest Scales

Abstract

We investigated the psychometric properties of the Oregon Vocational Interest Scales (ORVIS), a brief public-domain alternative to commercial inventories, in a large community sample and in a college sample. In both samples, we examined the factor structure, scale intercorrelations, and personality correlates of the ORVIS, and in the community sample we also examined the correlations of the ORVIS scales with cognitive abilities and with the scales of a longer, proprietary interest survey. In both samples, all eight scales-Leadership, Organization, Altruism, Creativity, Analysis, Producing, Adventuring, and Erudition-showed wide variation in scores, high internal-consistency reliabilities, and a pattern of high convergent and low discriminant correlations with the scales of the proprietary interest survey. Overall, the results support the construct validity of the scales, which are recommended for use in research on vocational interests and other individual differences. KeywordsVocational Interests; Personality; Ability In this report, we introduce the Oregon Vocational Interest Scales. This new instrument measures eight important types of occupational interest, similar to those identified by Holland (1973) and Campbell, Hyne, and Nilsen (1992), but has the additional advantages of being brief and available in the public domain. Assessment of Vocational InterestsVocational interests represent an important domain of individual differences, one that overlaps only partially with the ability or personality domains (e.g., Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997 Measures of the major areas of vocational interest can discriminate among persons of different occupational groups or academic majors, providing incremental validity beyond that provided by ability or personality variables (e.g., Logue, Lounsbury, Gupta, & Leong, 2007). Some research even indicates that vocational interests can discriminate between persons of different sexual orientations much more strongly than can personality characteristics (Lippa, 1998). Given the importance of vocational interests as individual difference variables, a brief publicdomain measure of the main areas of vocational interest would be useful for researchers.Prior to developing a self-report measure of vocational interests, the researcher must choose a strategy for constructing scales and a format for presenting items. Some inventories are based on a criterion-oriented strategy, whereby items are selected on the basis of their empirical ability to discriminate between occupational groups; other inventories are based on a constructoriented strategy, whereby items are selected on the basis of their conceptual relevance to a given domain of interests (see Cronbach, 1990, p. 467). Some inventories involve a forcedchoice item format, whereby respondents must indicate which item is most or least endorsed; other inventories involve a single-stimulus item format, whereby respondents must indicate their level of endorsement of each item in turn (see Cronbach, 1990, p. 470). The scales of the pre...

Relating the Spherical representation of vocational interests to the HEXACO personality model

“…Our results strongly converge with the results from previous studies (McKay & Tokar, 2012;Pozzebon et al, 2010). The two most noticeable differences were as follows.…”

“…We then also compared our findings to those of McKay and Tokar (2012) and Pozzebon et al (2010). Both previous studies used normative, and not ipsatized, scales when comparing interests to personality.…”

“…First, we investigate if the structure of Spherical representation of vocational interests also applies to our Dutch sample. Second, we compare vocational interests and personality relations in our sample to previous large meta-analytic studies (e.g., Barrick et al, 2003;Larson et al, 2002) and studies using the HEXACO (McKay & Tokar, 2012;Pozzebon et al, 2010). Third, we expand previous research by further investigating the relations between Prestige interests and the HEXACO model of personality.…”

“…Currently, only two North American studies (McKay & Tokar, 2012;Pozzebon et al, 2010) have compared the HEXACO personality model to vocational interests and these studies have not used the spherical representation for this comparison. Pozzebon et al (2010) developed the Oregon Vocational Interest Scales (ORVIS) and studied the relation between the ORVIS and the HEXACO. ORVIS structures vocational interest in eight scales.…”

“…We repeated the same procedure for the correlations found by Pozzebon et al (2010). To compute the Realistic interest scale we averaged the correlation values on Producing and Adventuring interests.…”