SVIB Scores, Occupational Choices, and Holland's Personality Types

This study tested the effectiveness of Holland's theory of vocational choice for predicting students' satisfaction with their choices of college majors. Upperclassmen majoring in mathematics and sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, classified according to Holland's six personality types on the basis of their responses to the Vocational Preference Inventory, rated themselves on satisfaction with their college majors. Satisfaction with major was significantly related to personality type among the students majoring in mathematics but not among those majoring in sociology; however, the pattern of satisfaction expressed by four of the six personality types in sociology agreed with theoretical expectations.

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confidence: 92%

A test of Holland's theory of vocational choice.

Morrow¹

1971

“…One study was located that supports the possibility of including Holland's themes in a card sort task. Wall, Osipow, and Ashby (1967) found that when male college students ranked descriptions of the six Holland personality types, in the order in which they were self-descriptive, these descriptions were related to logical SVIB group scores as were the Holland types of the occupations they listed as their first through fifth choices. The relevance of the study for vocational counseling is increased by the statement of the authors that a substantial number of the students in the sample were quite undecided about their vocational and educational objectives.…”

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confidence: 99%

Expressed and inventoried vocational interests: A comparison of instruments.

Slaney

1978

This study compared the responses of 84 female subjects to a measure of inventoried interests, the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory (SCII), and a measure of expressed interests, the Vocational Card Sort (VCS). The VCS task included the Holland themes and used the basic interest and occupational scales from the SCII. The results from both measures were related. The VCS was not significantly different from the SCII in internal consistency. The VCS themes were better predictors of expressed choices than were the SCII themes. Comparisions of the instruments by the subjects did not yield clear preferences, and there was a strong tendency for subjects to suggest that a friend take both instruments. Subjects perceived sex bias in the SCII but not in the VCS. Overall, the results support the use of the Vocational Card Sort including the Holland themes and the SCII basic interest category. The findings are discussed in relation to their implications for vocational counseling and future research.The use of expressed vocational interests in vocational counseling appears to be rather limited, particularly in relation to the use of inventoried interests. One of the reasons for this would appear to be that no instrument presently exists for measuring expressed interests that is comparable, in terms of widespread use and available research, to the Strong Vocational Interest Blank (SVIB) and its recent revision, the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory (SCII;Campbell, 1974). Recently however, Dewey (1974) has suggested an instrument, the Non-Sexist Vocational Card Sort (NSVCS) for the measurement of expressed interests. This instrument is related to Tyler's Vocational Card Sort (TVCS;Tyler, 1961) and is described by Dolliver (1967). Two studies relevant to these instruments were located.

“…Holland and others have conducted a number of studies related to the theory and its constructs. These studies have generally used one of four empirical approaches: (a) the investigation of the relationship between personal orientation as measured by the Vocational Preference Inventory (VPI; Holland, 1965) and other inventories and educational choice (Holland, 1960(Holland, , 1962(Holland, , 1963aWall, Osipow, & Ashby, 1967); (b) assessment of the range of personal orientation of a variety of educational, vocational, and hospitalized groups (Fairweather, Simon, Gebhard, Weingarten, Holland, Sanders, Stone, & Reahl, 1960;Holland, 1958); (c) investigation of the relationship between VPI scale scores and self-ratings or self-descriptions on traits which the various scales are assumed to measure (Holland, 1962(Holland, , 1963b(Holland, , 1964; and (d) investigation of the associations and relationships of scale scores with various external criteria (Astin, 1963;Astin & Holland, 1961;Forsyth & Fairweather, 1961;Holland, 1958Holland, , 1962Lopez, 1962;Osipow, Ashby, & Wall, 1966). In general, the results of these studies lend support to the meanings attributed to the scales.…”

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confidence: 99%

Perceived change and Holland's theory.

Walsh¹,

Lacey²

1969

The purpose of the study was to determine if college student, male seniors assigned to one of Holland's personality types (using college major as the criterion) perceived themselves as having changed in a direction consistent with the profile of that type during the college years. In the analysis of variance of the scale scores, the test for the main effect of groups was found to be significant for the Realistic, Intellectual, and Artistic scales. The results suggest that for three of the groups perceived change was associated with the personality type.