engleski

The equivalence of liking and competence interest measures: The appropriateness of their combined use in the assessment of RIASEC types

From Holland’s years on, main measures of RIASEC types integrate estimates of liking and competence in various activities in an overall vocational interest measure. The grounds for such a decision can be found in the fact that both endorsement for particular activities and the perceived competencies in those activities motivate people to choose some particular occupation or career. However, although administration of both measures can be informative, it is also a burdening process as it always lengthens the instrument. Therefore we wanted to analyze whether the application of both measures really improves the career decision-making process. The new Pictorial and Descriptive Interest Inventory (PDII, Babarović and Šverko, 2010) has been administered to a sample of 641 secondary school students, along with a measure of Big five personality types (International Personality Item Pool, IPIP). The PDII inventory is an Internet-based measure of RIASEC interests, intended to be used as a self-evaluation tool in the career decision-making process. To estimate the RIASEC types, the respondents evaluate both liking and competence in 48 different occupations, which are represented with job title, short job description and a photograph of a person involved in a typical job activity. For each respondent two series of RIASEC scores have been formulated: one on the basis of liking-estimates, and the other on the basis of competency-estimates. The similarity among the two types of measures has been studied by testing the invariance of their hexagonal structure and its underlying dimensions. Also the relation among the two types of RIASEC scores and the Big five personality types was also calculated. At last, the accuracy of the prediction of students’ occupational profile was calculated on the basis of the two different RIASEC measures. Results suggest that the liking-scales show slightly better structure, more logical relation to the Big five personality types and somewhat better prediction of the respondents’ occupational profile than the competency-scales. However, the results obtained on the total RIASEC scores are very close to the ones obtained on liking estimates solely. The supposed advantages and disadvantages of the joint measurement are discussed.

interest measures; RIASEC types; Pictorial and Descriptive Interest Inventory

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