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Description / Interest Profiler/Career Clusters / Background / Frequently Asked Questions

Description

The Interest Profiler helps individuals identify their work-related interests, acquire self-knowledge about their vocational personality type, and develop career awareness of matching occupations.

The Interest Profiler is composed of 60 items, each describing a work activity. The items represent a broad range of training levels. Users are asked to choose one of three possible answers for each of the activities: Like, Not Sure, Dislike.

In 2011, Choices Planner adopted O*NET's 60-item short form Interest Profiler. The longer form, with 180 items, was often too lengthy for students to complete within a typical class timeframe.

At completion of the Interest Profiler six occupational interests are presented in order of the user's highest interest to lowest interest. Results are then matched with possible careers. Results can also be imported into the Career Finder and combined with other factors in the user's search for occupations.

It is important to remind users that the Interest Profiler is not a test. There are no right or wrong answers, only answers which accurately reflect their own interests.

The results should be used for career exploration and vocational counseling, but not for applicant-screening for jobs or training programs. The relationship between assessment results and success in a particular job or training program has not been determined.

The Interest Profiler is appropriate for users 14 years of age or older with eighth grade or higher level reading skills.

The Interest Profiler is also available in Spanish.

Interest Profiler/Career Clusters

Career Cluster Results

Users’ Interest Profiler results now link to career clusters in Choices Planner. After completing the Interest Profiler assessment, users can see the top career clusters, in addition to the top careers that match their interests. 

Since careers in the database are not evenly distributed across the 16 career clusters, the system applies a weighted ranking of the careers to determine the order of cluster results. The following calculation is used:

The careers suggested by a user’s Interest Profiler results are categorized into career clusters (for the user’s top two interests). The number of interest-matching careers in each career cluster is then divided by the total number of careers in the career cluster to determine the weighted ranking. The results of these divisions are then sorted for each career cluster, determining the order of career clusters shown to users.

Beside each career cluster on the results page, there is a percentage in brackets. This percentage represents the results of the divisions described above. For example, 50% next to a career cluster indicates that half of all the careers in this cluster match both of your top interests.

Users can click on the cluster name to obtain a list of careers in the cluster that matches their Interest Profiler results. A check mark next to the career indicates that the career matches the user’s interests. Careers matching interests are listed in alphabetical order, followed by all other careers in the cluster.

If a tie results with three or more top interests, users are prompted to select just two interests in order to see their results.

Background

The Interest Profiler originated in the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and was distributed under the name "O*NET Interest Profiler". It was developed to serve a variety of programs involved in providing career exploration and vocational counseling services to clients.

The DOL designed the Interest Profiler to be compatible with the work of John L. Holland, as presented in his Making Vocational Choices: A Theory of Vocational Personalities and Work Environments (1985a). In this book, Holland categorized occupations into six personality types, which correlate with the interests of people in each occupation.

According to this model, individuals who share many interests with people in a given occupation will probably favor that occupation. Also, the better the match between personality and work environment, the more satisfied the individual will be on the job.

Holland identified the following six personality types, which correspond to six occupational work environments:

• Realistic
• Investigative
• Artistic
• Social
• Enterprising
• Conventional

Together, they are referred to in acronym form as the "RIASEC" construct.

It is important to remember that an individual's interests will match several of the six interest categories and that one category will probably be stronger than the others. Furthermore, Holland's theory suggests that the RIASEC areas are related in a hexagonal fashion, as shown in the following illustration.

In this system, adjacent interest areas (black lines) are most similar to each other, sharing many common characteristics.

Once-removed areas (green lines) have some shared characteristics.

Opposite areas (blue lines) have few, if any, common characteristics.

After careful analysis of the O*NET Interest Profiler, Bridges staff determined that it was appropriate for use in Choices Planner. Bridges then created the crosswalk to link the Interest Profiler to the Choices Planner database.

As indicated in the National O*NET Consortium's Development of the O*NET Interest Profiler (1999), the four primary goals set in developing the Interest Profiler were to achieve an instrument:

1. with strong technical characteristics that would provide clients with accurate and useful information;
2. that was fair and unbiased, to serve the needs of users from a variety of backgrounds;
3. that represented the entire world of work and provided useful information to users; and
4. that could empower users to take control of their career exploration activities through self-assessment, self-administration, self-scoring and self-interpretation, while also being suited to use by counselors in one-to-one or group counseling sessions.

The development process involved several phases:

Phase 1

Existing DOL interest instruments were reviewed. It was determined that all the instruments had problems ranging from technical insufficiencies to outdated items or format. All did, however, have individual items that could constitute a starting point.

Phase 2

Phase 3

A taxonomy was created to provide structure to the process of developing and selecting items for the Interest Profiler. Within each of the RIASEC constructs, work content areas were identified which were derived from the 66 work groups in the Guide for Occupational Exploration (1979).

With each RIASEC construct, five levels of training requirements were identified to ensure that the items developed would represent the variety and complexity of the world of work. These training levels were a modified form of the Specific Vocational Preparation Scale presented in The Revised Handbook for Analyzing Jobs (1991).

Item development targets for the taxonomy were set at a minimum of 100 items per RIASEC construct, with equal representation for each work content area.

Phase 4

Five hundred and thirty-two items in the pool derived from Phase 2 were placed within the taxonomy. A team of four judges trained in Holland's (1985a) vocational theory and the taxonomy reviewed the items independently and assigned the items to one of the work content areas within the RIASEC construct.

Furthermore, four item writers were asked to write new items based on several considerations:

1. Fill in areas not meeting the minimum goals.
2. Describe work activities.
3. Increase the representation of training-level requirement found in the RIASEC construct.
4. Make items inoffensive to individuals and subgroups.
5. Use vocabulary comprehensible at an eighth grade reading level.
6. Ensure that items elicit an endorsement rate between 10 and 90 percent.
7. Reduce spurious gender and racial/ethnic endorsement rate differences.
8. Be familiar to individuals in a wide variety of settings:
1. entry-level and career transition settings;
2. urban, rural, and suburban settings; and
3. nationwide regional settings.

A pilot study was conducted, with the aim of eliminating items with similar and duplicate content. Upon completion of this study, a pool of 776 items remained.

Phase 5

The pool of 776 items was now put through a comprehensive screening process to remove items that failed to meet the standards set out below. Each item was required to meet seven screening criteria:

• Retranslation -- to ensure items truly represented their intended RIASEC construct
• Sensitivity -- to ensure that items were not offensive to any segments of the potential user population
• Comprehensibility -- all items which exceeded an eight grade reading level were identified and altered, or entirely rewritten
• Familiarity -- to ensure that items were recognizable to the entire range of potential clients (a total of 254 individuals from various backgrounds participated in this process)
• Training requirement -- to ensure that items represented a broad range of training requirements, as specified in the taxonomy
• Duplication -- to remove duplication of identical or nearly identical content
• Copyright -- to avoid copyright infringement, a review of Interest Profiler terms was compared to the Interest Finder from The ASVAB Counselor Manual (1995), the Self- Directed Search in Holland's The Self-Directed Search Professional Manual, the Strong Interest Inventory from J.C. Hansen and D.P. Campbell's Manual for the Strong Interest Inventory (1985), and the Revised Unisex Edition of the ACT Interest Inventory (1995). Items regarded as potential copyright infringements were cut.

Phase 6

After the review outlined in Phase 5, there were 500 items that remained. Based on the results of a study involving 1,123 participants from employment service offices, high schools, junior colleges, technical/trade schools, universities, and a variety of government agencies across six states, an item pool of 461 items was retained. The final 180 questions were selected from this pool of questions.

A correlation algorithm was developed to rank order the items assigned to each scale in terms of their conformity to structure implied by the hexagonal model. The structure specifies that an item should correlate most highly with its target scale, next strongest with its adjacent scale, less strongly with its alternative scales, and least strongly with its opposite scale.

The following algorithm was applied:

1 - target scale correlation - { (.5 * opposite scale correlation) - [.15 * (alternate scale correlation 1 + alternate scale correlation 2)] - [.1 * (adjacent scale correlation 1 + adjacent scale correlation 2)] }

The four judges independently made a qualitative selection of items based on the following information:

1. item-to-scale correlations
2. gender and race/ethnic endorsement rate differences
3. training level requirement ratings
4. work content area assignments

Judges discussed their respective selections and agreed on an initial selection of 30 items per scale. All six scales demonstrated a high degree of internal reliability with coefficient alphas ranging from .95 to .97.

Although differences did exist between the O*NET Interest Profiler and the Interest Finder, there was a very high correlation between corresponding scales, ranging from .71 (Enterprising) to .86 (Conventional) with a median value of .82.

Gender balance was evident in both instruments with the exception of the Realistic scale. This lack of balance may be reflective of traditional social gender differences. Racial balance also subsisted in most of the scales.

Phase 7

The goal of the format design of the O*NET Interest Profiler was to develop an instrument that:

1. could be reliably hand-scored by clients taking the instrument on their own;
2. would gather information necessary to produce accurate and reliable interest profiles;
3. would allow for review of the work activities within a RIASEC construct once the instrument was completed; and
4. would lend itself to an equivalent computerized form.

Phase 8

Further to Phase 7 activities, an evaluation of reliability, validity, and self-scoring was undertaken with 1,061 individuals from employment offices, junior colleges, trade schools and a variety of government offices in four states. A test-retest portion of the study was also carried out with 132 participants at the junior college/vocational level and at the college level.

One hundred and thirty-two participants were twice administered the O*NET Interest Profiler, and 120 participants were twice administered the Interest Finder. The results were that:

• The instrument was viewed as being easy to score, interesting and beneficial.
• Scores for internal consistency (.93 to .96) and test-retest reliability were high (.81 to .92).

More detailed information on the reliability and validity of the Interest Profiler can be found in James Rounds et al's O*NET Interest Profiler: Reliability, Validity, and Self-Scoring (1999).

For more technical information about the instrument from the developer, see the U.S. Department of Labor O*NET site at: http://www.onetcenter.org/IP.html

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Where do I find the Spanish version of the Interest Profiler?
2. Where can I see the Interest Profiler results in my portfolio?
3. I understand that the Interest Profiler is based on the Holland codes. But I can't see where the actual Holland code for each career is displayed. Am I overlooking something?
4. Where do I find a description of the six interest areas of the Interest Profiler?
5. Why does the Interest Profiler suggest over 100 careers that match my interests? This list is too long to be very useful.
6. After I complete the Interest Profiler and see my top interest areas, I see the ranking of my interest areas at the bottom of the page. Next to each of the interest areas, there is a number in brackets. What does that number indicate?
7. Why do my results show careers that only match my top two interests? How can I find careers matching my other interest areas?

1. Where do I find the Spanish version of the Interest Profiler?

Go to the Work page and click on the Interest Profiler link. On the Start page of the assessment, you can choose language: Spanish or English. Click on Spanish.

2. Where can I see the Interest Profiler results in my portfolio?

Interest Profiler results are automatically saved in your portfolio if you signed in when taking the assessment. They will be in the All About You page of the portfolio, under Work Interest Areas.

3. I understand that the Interest Profiler is based on the Holland codes. But I can't see where the actual Holland code for each career is displayed. Am I overlooking something?

The Holland codes appear in the Is This For You? tab within a Choices Planner career profile.

For example, you can log into Choices Planner and click on Work. Click on Alphabetical List and then Accountant (or any other career). Click on Is This For You? You will see that the first paragraph shows interests compatible with Holland's model.

4. Where do I find a description of the six interest areas of the Interest Profiler?

Go to the Work page and click on the Career Finder link. Under the My Characteristics heading, click on the Interests link. Here you will find a description of all six interest areas.

You can also see descriptions on the Interest Profile page once you complete the Interest Profiler. Click on the link for each interest area in the bar graph near the bottom of this page.

5. Why does the Interest Profiler suggest over 100 careers that match my interests? This list is too long to be very useful.

The Interest Profiler matches careers to your top several interest areas. Each career in the Choices Planner database is coded to at least two interest areas and there are over 600 careers in the database. So chances are good that if you use only the Interest Profiler to find careers, your list will be long.

We recommend combining the Interest Profiler results with other preferences and assessments to find careers. Use the Career Finder to do this. Select the Interest link in the Career Finder to import your results. Then select other preferences or import other results using the links in the left margin.

6. After I complete the Interest Profiler and see my top interest areas, I see the ranking of my interest areas at the bottom of the page. Next to each of the interest areas, there is a number in brackets. What does that number indicate?

A results list showing careers that match three interests would be too restrictive, particularly when the Artistic interest area is involved. However, all your interest results are displayed in order on your Interest Profile results page, under Your Ranking of Interest Areas. Click on any interest area to see the matching careers.

To see all the interest areas associated with a particular career, click on the career, then the Is This for You? page. Or use the Career Finder to do this more quickly. Select your top two interests under My Characteristics to see your list of matching careers. Each career in your list has a Compare your Selections feature. Click on this link to see all the interests associated with this career. While in the Career Finder, you can then choose other characteristics from the left sidebar, such as Work Values or Earnings, to narrow down your search.

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