The Construct Validity of a Career Interest Inventory Representing Eight Major Clusters of Professional Level Occupational Activities

Abstract

Within the conceptual framework provided by Roe's eight broad occupational classifications, an experimental form of a career interest inventory with items emphasizing job activities was constructed and administered to a sample of 654 students (268 males and 386 females) in a liberal arts college. From an initial pool of 336 items, 192 items were selected empirically to form 16 subscales (each of 12 items) corresponding to 16 hypothesized subclusters of job activities that had served to refine the presentation of the eight broad occupational categories. Within each of the subscales sets of three logically related items were chosen to permit the formation of 64 subtests, the intercorrelations of which were factor analyzed. Eight clearly defined orthogonally rotated factor dimensions were interpreted as describing quite accurately the eight postulated occupational classifications and as furnishing promising evidence for the construct validity of the inventory. Internal-consistency estimates of reliability ranging from .78 to .90 were found for the 16 subscales. Modest revisions of items are under way to be followed by cross-validation efforts with new samples from diverse populations.