The Student Activities Interest Questionnaire: Relating Holland's Vocational Theory to Student Involvement

Abstract

Both campus involvement and person-environment fit have been identified as factors predicting students' persistence in college. The Student Activities Interest Questionnaire (SAIQ) was developed in order to assist students in identifying campus involvement opportunities that match their personal interests, based on a classification system corresponding to Holland's hexagonal model of occupational preference. In this article, the authors describe the construction and validation of the instrument, and discuss its potential uses in promoting student retention.

Gender Differences in Undergraduate Holland Personality Types: Vocational and Cocurricular Implications

“…The consistency between equivalent items within the instrument has been found to range from .52 to .77, with a median of .67. Scores on all scales of the instrument have been found to relate significantly to respondents' preferred academic majors and their equivalent VPI scores (Murray & Hall, 2001).…”

“…The data used in this investigation were collected in connection with a previous study dealing with the basic psychometric properties of a newly developed interest inventory (Murray & Hall, 2001). In the current study, further analyses were conducted, in order to detect possible gender differences in scores on both this inventory and a more established instrument that had been used for validation purposes in the previous study.…”

“…Although the focus of Holland' s theory is primarily on vocational preferences, the underlying conceptual framework has also been found to relate to interests and activities outside the occupational realm (Sergent & Sedlacek, 1990;Varca & Shaffer, 1982). Likewise, applications of the theory have been extended beyond the context of voca-tional guidance, to include use as a tool for promoting cocurricular involvement (Jacoby, Rue, & Allen, 1984;Murray & Hall, 2001).…”

“…In view of the ongoing changes that have occurred in the social conditions surrounding women' s occupational choices, there is a need for recurring analysis of gender-related issues in vocational assessment. As student affairs professionals continue to apply vocational theory in new ways, as recommended in the literature of the field (Jacoby et al, 1984;Murray & Hall, 2001), assessment of gender differences in vocational orientations should reflect the full breadth of existing theoretical applications.…”

“…The fact that participants' scores on the SAIQ were even more differentiated by sex than were their scores on the VPI suggests that campus activities advisors should also carefully consider the issue of scoring, should they adopt the SAIQ as a tool for student organization referral, as recommended by Murray and Hall (2001). While the use of raw scores may result in a closer match between students' expressed interests and the activities of recommended organizations, the practice might also hold the potential to promote sex-segregation on campus and unequal opportunities for leadership development.…”