Measurement of Interests in Relation to Human Adjustment
- Author:
Douglas Fryer,
Associate Professor of Psychology, New York University, with an introduction by Lewis M. Terman. Harrap. 18/6.
The developments of interests cannot be as clear cut as the development of abilities. If it }Tere> life would lose much of its variety. But rf16 practical value for educational and voca.l0nal guidance of some reliable standard of interest measurement would be so great that the Research surveyed by Prof. Fryer in this book eserves close examination.
^he work which has so far been done is summarized impartially and there is no eagerness ? hurry to premature generalizations. Indeed, . ls fair to say that the main result of the /^Vestigation of interests has been to show what ^ay not be assumed and so to define the proper c?Pe 0f thg enquiry. It is shown, for example, flat there is no necessary relation between interns and abilities or even between subjective and elective interests. Moreover, the fluctuation interests especially in childhood and adolesnce makes them a completely unreliable basis for guidance.
What does emerge as the most significant conclusion from present research is that there is a genetic development of interests. Indications of the direction of personal growth and of need for adjustment may often be found in the discovery of the line of development taken by changing interests. Prof. Fryer puts as the chief task of future research the establishment of norms of development of interests in educational courses and in occupations. Interest measurement now needs to know what is average, inferior, and superior development in the various fields of interests and to use this knowledge in the adjustment of the individual. The book is conveniently arranged and for those who desire to know what are the reliable conclusions of research in measurement of interests and to estimate its future possibilities, it will well repay reading.
Disclaimer
The historical material in this project falls into one of three categories for clearances and permissions:
Material currently under copyright, made available with a Creative Commons license chosen by the publisher.
Material that is in the public domain
Material identified by the Welcome Trust as an Orphan Work, made available with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
While we are in the process of adding metadata to the articles, please check the article at its original source for specific copyrights.