The development of a vocational interest measuring instrument in an adult educational setting

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT:The major concern in the world of work has been the mismatch between a person'svocational interests and job pursuits. The understanding has been that jobs makediffering demands on people and that the abilities of the individual and demands ofthe job have a bearing on productivity hence the need for matching people to jobs.The most notable attempts to identify and organize vocational interests have beenHolland's theory of vocational interests and personality types. Holland asserts thatpeople can be categorized predominantly as one of six personality types, namely,realistic (R), investigative (I), artistic (A), social (S), enterprising (E), and conventional(C).The review of literature has shown that person-environment fit explains the degree ofmatch between occupational pursuits and one's vocational interests and that before ameasure can be used across cultures, its construct validity must be established ineach culture.The current study was motivated by the Zimbabwe Public Service Commission'squest, in the absence of vocational interest measures tailored for Zimbabwe, forassessment tools that can assist in predicting suitability for recruitment or promotion.The study was therefore designed to (a) develop a measure of vocational interestvalidated on the Zimbabwe population, (b) build a model for predicting and classifyingpeople into job sectors and (c) assess the adequacy of Holland's RIASEC structure for assessing person-job fit in the Zimbabwe Public Service. To achieve this, acorrelational research design was used. The vocational interest measure and theMB-10 were the two instruments used for data collection. A sample of 500 publicservants representing six occupational sectors in the Zimbabwe Public Serviceparticipated in the study. Statistical approaches to data analysis included reliabilityand validity analysis, factor analysis and multiple discriminant analysis.The results of the reliability coefficients were within acceptable levels. The subscalereliabilities of the vocational interest measure ranged from ra = 0.85 to ra = 0.89.Overall, the concurrent validity of the vocational interest measure was established.Factor analysis and correlation coefficients statistic assessed the adequacy of thehexagonal ordering of the RIASEC types. Factor analysis was computed resulting in8 factors being extracted instead of the theoretically conceptualized 6 factors. The 8extracted factors accounted for 65.88% of the total variance. Holland's theory affirmsthat occupational types that are more proximate on the hexagon are more similarthan types that are more distant. Results of the RIASEC intercorrelations showedstrong correlations between Realistic and Investigative (r = 0.69) and moderatecorrelations with four of the adjacent types. However, low and negative correlationswere obtained between Conventional and Realistic (adjacent types) (r = -0.14) andbetween Investigative and Conventional (alternate types) (r = -0.11). On the other hand, there was strong correlation between Realistic and Social (opposite types) (r =0.25.)The model for predicting and classifying people into appropriate job sectors wasdeveloped. The model's utility was confirmed using the scores from the sample data.The cross validation table obtained an error rate of 0.29, an indication of a relativelygood model.Given the results of the present study, it appears the study hypotheses weregenerally supported. Further work in refining the model is recommended.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University