The Interest Inventory in College Vocational C4uidance1
- Author:
Karl M. Cowdery
Stanford University
This paper includes a discussion of a number of items of varying degrees of importance, associated with the applied rather than with the theoretical or developmental aspects of interest measurement and its interpretation. I. In counselling students, and in discussing the ratings available from interest blanks, one of the chief problems is to make clear that we are not measuring either specific ability or special aptitude, but that we are classifying attitudes into categorical classes of vocational significance. Our purpose, and the critcrial validation of the ratings are such, that we must conclude that we are making classifications of conative reactions which help the individual to the highest expression of capacities and aptitudes. The latter, in turn, need to be directly identified and measured in other ways, and by other tests.
In the original Stanford study, following earlier work by Freyd, Moore and Ream, at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, in which classifications were made of interests in terms of those found to be typical of successful doctors, lawyers, and engineers, no satisfactory criterion of degrees of aptitude was available. The best we had was that of grades in pre-professional and professional courses. The interest ratings distinguished objectively the direction of inclinations, but the size of the score on the scale of the appropriate profession showed no consistent relationship with the critcrial index of pre-professional ability in the cases of law and medical students. The correlations between interest scores and level of achievement were practically zero. In the case of engineers the coefficient, though positive, was based on a small group of cases, and was only three times its probable error (.33?.ll). As was concluded at the time of that study and of a later check-up on 60 additional engineering students, relative success is not predicted with any degree of accuracy by relative standing above the critical level of interest scores. Only the categorical classification is significant. ‘Read at the annual meeting of the National Vocational Guidance Association, Atlantic City, Feb. 20-22, 1930.
It may be asked, “Just what is the significance of a high positive score as compared with a somewhat lower score 011 the same side of the critical level?” By the nature of the scoring device high scores represent an accumulation of evidence of the validity of the categorical classification. The higher the score, the greater is the probability that the classification is correct. At the critical level of score, the chances are just even that the subject’s attitudes are or arc not typical of the profession concerned. To mean anything, a score must be accompanied by information as to the critical score and the probable error of estimate of a single score.
In guidance, the vocational counsellor is therefore limited to employing these interest scores as confirmatory evidence of one phase of fitness and likelihood of success in a profession without implying that it carries direct evidence of other traits and abilities, lie must look to other sources, such as the Zyve test of scientific aptitude or the Thurstone so-called vocational guidance tests for the evidence of special ability for engineering; to some of the indices of Crawford at Yale, Brolyer at Princeton, and Thorndike and others at Columbia for evidence of specific aptitudes for law and for other professions.
II. The experience of our vocational counsellor at Stanford University,2 leads him to conclude that if a student asks the question “Am I fitted for profession A?” the first evidence to be evaluated comes from school grades in the preparatory subjects of that profession, and, in a few cases, from scores on available suitable general and specific capacity tests. The evidence of a positive or negative or non-committal interest classification rating is probably next in importance, as a basis for deciding whether the subject has or needs to have developed the necessary inclinations and sources of “drive” and satisfactions which will permit him to use his abilities to the maximum or to persist in overcoming any discovered deficiencies in the necessary ability and training. Third, and possibly less important because more easily controlled, evidence is to be sought of the opportunities, possibly limited by other personality traits, for using the capacities under the motivation of his interests.
III. For the student not yet concerned with a specific profession, but at the stage of actively wondering what his abilities 2 Mr. C. Gilbert Wrenn, working under the joint auspices of the faculty Vocational Guidance Committee of which Dr Strong is chairman, and of the Registrar’s office, Dr J. Pearce Mitchell, Registrar.
and inclinations arc, Mr. Wrenn describes the Strong series of interest ratings as practically the only available comprehensive basis for helping the subject to narrow his field. To date, with the relatively cumbersome method of scoring worked out by the author and improved by Dr Strong, ratings have been rather expensive. In view of these circumstances, Mr. Wrenn recommends a sampling from four or five fields such as social service, public service, pure science, applied science, commercial and artistic occupations. From the relative ratings on these there usually appear one or two, rarely more, which give indications of significant inclination. Such a finding focuses the attention of the student on the group of occupations in which it is profitable for him and the counsellor to seek the more direct evidences of ability and opportunity.
With the imminent availability of fast mechanical scoring, as worked out by Rulon at Minnesota and adapted by Strong, ratings 011 from nineteen to twenty-five occupations will be available for the present cost of two or three. Such service will provide an opportunity for a wider range and a more detailed preliminary survey in the selection of fields for more intensive consideration. IV. In the first three months of the full counselling service provided at Stanford University there has been a growth in demand from an hour a day or less to more than the daily half day which had been planned for a combination of conferences and study of associated problems for the development of techniques and information in guidance. Once a week the period is spent in special aptitude testing to supplement the interest blank ratings which are handled by the research division of the Registrar’s office. Daring these three months, in 67 conferences, with 3-t students 172 interest ratings on the Strong Vocational Interest Blank, and 24 other test scores of various kinds were employed. The indications in the first few weeks of the second three months are of further growth in the demand for service started two years or more ago when a few interest ratings and interpretations were provided by the Registrar’s Office.
Summary
The evidence to date is that the interest inventory has a strictly categorical classificatory function, that size of score on the CowderyStrong technique is an index of the statistical significance of the classification, rather than a direct measure of degree of aptitude. It is to be hoped that further research on the part of Dr Strong and of others will reveal evidence of further relationships, possibly indirect, but of still richer import.
The interest inventory serves as supplementary and confirmatory evidence to accompany other and more direct indications of general and special abilities in cases where students are concerned with their total fitness for only one or two professions. It is one of very few available means for a survey, from the points of view of any large number of occupations and professions, of the inclinations of a student who is uncertain as to his occupational destination. “We have at least local evidence of a genuine demand (110 students being summoned for interview) for the type of service made available in a central office for vocational information, tests and counselling.
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