engleski

Differentiation and consistency of interests: Traditional indices and measures derived from cosine function

Holland (1985) established the most famous model of vocational interests. Model specifies the hexagonal ordering of six RIASEC types: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional. Individual’s RIASEC profile should be directed toward particular areas of interests, and should be consistent within a person. To describe these ideas, Holland derived differentiation and consistency of RIASEC profile (Holland, 1985). Differentiation of interests’ profile is defined by interests’ clarity (Holland, 1985), while consistency represents similarity between individual’s most expressed interests (Holland, 1985). Tracey et al. (2014) criticized the use of conventional measures and proposed measures derived from the full RIASEC profile based on the cosine function. Since RIASEC scores can be well fit by a circumplex structure, they adopted the cosine function used in personality (Gurtman & Balakrishnan, 1998) which provides information about adherence of individual’s scores to the circular ordering. The aim of this study is to compare traditional measures of differentiation and consistency with measures derived from the cosine function. The data was collected through an on-line testing platform developed for a longitudinal study of adolescent career transition (N=981). Amplitude index is the new measure of differentiation, and is calculated as standard deviation of individual RIASEC scores. Results showed it is almost collinear with one conventional index, and moderate or strongly related to others. Further, cosine fit is the new measure of consistency, and results indicated its moderate correlation to the traditional measures of consistency. Results generally indicated great overlapping of measures, but still indicated unique variability of consistency measure based on the cosine function. The application of different measures provides more thorough insight into individuals' traits and ensures more objective conclusions and more equal treatment of all individuals.

vocational interest ; differentiation ; consistency

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