This document discusses the importance and development of vocational interest inventories (VII). It notes that VII aim to help individuals identify careers that match their personalities, abilities, and interests in order to find satisfying and successful work. The document outlines John Holland's influential theory that categorized interests and careers into six types. It then discusses key assumptions about VII, such as the idea that interests remain stable over time. Different approaches to measuring interests are presented, as well as positive characteristics that effective VII should possess. Finally, some widely used VII are described briefly, including the Strong Vocational Interest Blank and Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory.

1. INTRODUCTION<br />Every individual at a point in time in his life ponders over what kind of Job he will have or the kind of career that will be suitable for him. Some are even confused and wish somebody would just tell me what career I should enter”, or “can’t make up my mind between fashion designing and legal practicing.” Or even, some burst out, really upset because “I can’t think of any job I’m interested in”. In response to these appraisals, it is important that individuals find out not only who they are (personality) what kind of work they would be able to do (ability), but also, what kind of work would the person find interesting and personally satisfying. In fact, the individual needs to know what interests him and thus, bring him a personal satisfaction and success in life. This information on what interests and satisfies the person is of great importance to counselors, teachers, and others who assist youths and adults in career and related decision making. It is also important to the employee and the employer because employer would want to hire the services of an employee who is both stable and at same-time, satisfied with his job.<br />It is for these reasons that the development of inventories to assess interests and values has been a major concern to a number of testing and personnel psychologists. They are aware of the fact that there are many occupations that people may never have thought about, and so may not have ever formulated any expression of interest for them. And also, there are many jobs, perhaps most jobs concerning which they have only the sketchiest of impressions of what the job entails – what tasks are done and under what circumstances (Thorndike & Hagen 1979).<br />Test development in psychology therefore came as a result of occupational selection and classification. Vocational Interests Inventories (VII) received much attention for educational and career counseling. According to Anastasi (1988), “in dealing with individual’s personality, the nature and these characteristics affect certain variables such as his educational and occupational achievements, interpersonal relationship, satisfaction derived from his work that move his success in life.”<br />One of the most popular theories ever propounded to describe interests and how they relate to jobs, people and the environments is that of John Holland. Holland (1985), quoted in Hanson (1995), posits that both people and environments could be put into six occupational groupings<br />Realistic- outdoors, mechanical

2. Investigation- science, mathematics

3. Artistic- art, language, music

4. Social- helping, teaching

5. Enterprising- selling, business

6. Conventional- details, clerical.Holland’s personality theory of career development has a powerful impact on the field of career counseling and interest assessment that many interest inventories formulated include scales that measure interests related to Holland’s six types.<br />BASIC ASSUMPTIONS<br />Bordin, cited in Shertzer and stone (1976), presents two corollaries on his assumption on the nature of VII. These corollaries are:<br />The degree of clarity of an interest type will vary positively with the degree acceptance of the occupational stereotypes as self-descriptive, and

7. The degree of clarity of an interest type will vary positively with the degree of knowledge of the true occupational stereotype.The above assumptions explain that the individuals’ responses on a VII express the acceptance of a particular view or concept of themselves in relation to occupation conventional images in interests, which are true of the occupations. Cunningham (1986) also outlines the following five assumptions:<br />Careers differ in terms of the personality characteristics and interest and those in the careers must have them in order to be happy and successful.

8. Interest inventory is to match the individual’s characteristics to the career.

9. A person’s interest remains stable.

10. The interest structure of jobs remains stable.

11. People have interests that must be objectively measured to match occupation.

12. NATURE OF VII

13. The inventory approach presents quite a string of statements to examinee /respondent and they are the following:

14. Jobs