Personality Differences as Measured by the Hand Test among Holland Types for Females

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Daniel and Wagner (1) administered the Vocational Preference Inventory and the Hand Test to male undergraduates and obtained results consistent with the w n s u u a validity of Holland's theory of vocational types. Inasmuch as Holland's typology reportedly is more suitable for males than females, a similar comparison was needed for women. The present study addressed this issue. Subjects, 122 females in classes of introductory psychology, were administered the sixth revision of Holland's test ( 2 ) and classified according to their highest point scores into one of the six Holland Types, Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. These students were then administered the Hand Test ( 3 ) and the six Vocational Preference Inventory types were compared across 23 Hand Test scoring categories. Using Kruskal-Wallis tests, five Hand Test variables significantly differentiared imong the Holland types (P = .05) : Aggression, Passive, Interpersonal, Average Initial Reaction Time, and number of responses. Subsequently, ad hoc Mann-Whitney U tests were computed comparing each Holland type with every other type on the six significant Hand Test variables. T o avoid alpha buildup only those pairs significant at the .O1 were retained for analysis. Based on mean ranks, the Realistic group was: higher than the Social group on Aggression and Passive; lower on Average Initial Reaction Time than the Invest~gat~ve, Social, and Enterprising groups; and higher on Number of Responses than the Investigative group. Interestingly, the significance levels were higher for these young women than for the previously reported male sample of comparable size. Of further interest was the critical role apparently played by the Realistic group in the significant differences. The Realistic group was involved in all six of the significant Mann-Whitney comparisons. Findings for the male students were much more heterogeneous and did not yield the same Realistic group cluster. In the one instance where direct comparison was possible, the Investigative men showed more responses than the Realistic men but the opposite held for women. The implication is that Realistic women may demonstrate greater deviations from other Holland types than Realistic men. This may account for the growing consensus that Holland's typology is less applicable to women than men. It appears rhat some Holland types are modestly associated with other personality measures but they are not the same for men and women. Although some significant values were obtained, the differences on absolute scores between groups were not great. As other studies have shown, relationships among personality traits and Holland rgpes appear to be modest.