The vocational interest survey for Australia: Its use with unemployed individuals

Abstract

Arising from the growing need for a comprehensive career-guidance service for adults, and in particular for unemployed people in Australia, this study reports results that can be interpreted as generally supporting the use of the VISA with the unemployed. Additionally, the factor analyses, particularly the higher order factor analysis, raised questions about the utility of the eight VISA subscales and suggested that a two-factor solution of the VISA data might be more practical for practitioners providing vocational counselling to the unemployed. Descriptive statistics for the unemployed Australian population suggest that if a two-factor solution is used to Interpret the data, then the unemployed are significantly more likely to nominate their interests toward the things pole of a people–things dimension than Australian secondary school students. The study begins to address the dearth of research in the area of career guidance for the unemployed.