Ultraorthodox men spend years studying religion and delay entry into the workforce until their early 30s. They then face barriers such as insufficient education and work experience, religious restrictions, and a lack of career information and self-knowledge. Although there is considerable interest in assessment, no measure has been validated…

We present the PreferenSort, a career counseling instrument that derives counselees' vocational interests from their preferences among occupational titles. The PreferenSort allows for a holistic decision process, while taking into account the full complexity of occupations and encouraging deliberation about one's preferences and acceptable…

A population of people that are living longer and working longer invite a reconsideration of interests and interest measurement as individuals make substantial changes in their vocational and avocational pursuits later in life. The relationship of interests to vocational hope and childhood exposure to work is also discussed.

In the field of career development, there is an acknowledged relationship between career assessment and career counseling. Traditional career assessment and more recent narrative approaches to career counseling are perceived as having an uneasy relationship because of their different philosophical bases. A sustainable future story for the field…

Two studies examined the conceptualization of career interests as traits using self-other agreement data. Study 1 participants were 114 college student-friend dyads, and Study 2 participants were 93 student-parent dyads. In each study, students provided interest (using Holland's realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and…

The current study applied Holland's RIASEC typology to develop a "Physician Skills Inventory". We identified the transferable skills and abilities that are critical to effective performance in medicine and had 140 physicians in 25 different specialties rate the importance of those skills. Principal component analysis of their responses produced…

Career assessment has advanced on several fronts, enabling a CAPA integrative online system for exploring college majors with unprecedented precision and utility. The key inventories in the system are the CAPA Confidence Inventory (CCI), with its 6 general and 27 specific scales, and the CAPA Interest Inventory, with its 6 general and 35 specific…

The Jackson Career Explorer (JCE) is a short form and continuous version of the Jackson Vocational Interest Survey (JVIS). The 34 scales of the JCE were investigated in relation to the Career Directions Inventory (CDI). Participants (N = 282) aged 14-57 years were volunteers from local high schools and colleges and completed both measures. The…

The purpose of this study was to ascertain vocational interests and self-estimated work-relevant abilities of young adults with disabilities. Results showed that young adults with both low incidence and high incidence disabilities have a wide range of interests and self-estimated work-relevant abilities that are comparable to those in the general…

The first purpose was to determine if overall gender differences in basic confidence as measured by the Expanded Skills Confidence Inventory (ESCI) and basic interests as measured by the 2005 Strong Interest Inventory (SII) would be present within eight college major families. As expected, anticipated overall gender differences in confidence and…

The present report consists of two further validity studies using the Jackson Career Explorer (JCE), a short form and continuous version of the Jackson Vocational Interest Survey, measuring 34 interests. The first study examined the relationships between the JCE and five personality factors, from a sample of 528 individuals. The correlations found…

Research on group differences in interests has often focused on structural hypotheses and mean-score differences in Holland's (1997) theory, with comparatively little research on basic interest measures. Group differences in interest profiles were examined using statistical methods for matching individuals with occupations, the C-index, Q…

Three test construction strategies are described and illustrated in the development of the Verb Interest Test (VIT), an inventory that assesses vocational interests using verbs. Verbs might be a promising alternative to the descriptions of occupational activities used in most vocational interest inventories because they are context-independent,…

The authors report further validity evidence for the Chinese version of a U.S. adult social self-efficacy inventory, the "Perceived Social Self-Efficacy" (PSSE) scale in Chinese populations. Study 1 participants were 323 new graduate students enrolled at a large university in an east coast city of the People's Republic of China. Differential item…

Interests, personality, and values figure prominently in work motivation, yet little research has examined the combined influence of these factors on vocational behavior. The present study therefore examined relationships among these variables in a sample of 282 medical students (169 women, 113 men) who responded to the Strong Interest Inventory,…