Career interests: John Holland's RIASEC model

Where the model comes from

Starting in the late 1950s, psychologist John Holland proposed that both people and work environments can be described by six interest types: Realistic (making, fixing, working with things), Investigative (researching, understanding), Artistic (creating, expressing), Social (helping, teaching), Enterprising (leading, persuading) and Conventional (organizing, following procedures). Their initials form RIASEC.

Holland arranged the six types on a hexagon: neighbours such as Investigative and Artistic are more alike, while opposites such as Artistic and Conventional are least alike. The theory's core idea is congruence: people tend to be more satisfied in environments that match their interests (Holland, 1997).

What the research says

It is one of the most studied models in vocational psychology (Nauta, 2010). The circular structure of the six types holds up reasonably in many groups, though it fits US samples better than samples from other countries (Rounds & Tracey, 1996). Interests are fairly stable from early adulthood on.

For a long time interests were thought to predict satisfaction but not performance. A meta-analysis of more than 60 years of studies showed that interests, especially when they match the job, also relate to performance and persistence, with effects comparable to personality traits (Nye et al., 2012). The link between congruence and satisfaction is real but modest.

The US Department of Labor uses the model in the O*NET network, which classifies hundreds of occupations by RIASEC code and offers a free, public-domain interest profiler.

Criticisms and debates

There are large average differences between men and women on the "things versus people" dimension (Su, Rounds & Armstrong, 2009), which raises questions about socialization and about tests reinforcing stereotypes. Another criticism is that six types are a simplification: specific interests within the same type can vary a lot.

Limitations

Ethea's test uses forced choice between pairs of activities, so it shows the order of your interests, not their intensity. Someone with little interest in almost anything and someone keen on everything can get the same code. With 30 items, the last two letters of the code tend to be less stable than the first. The test is no substitute for career counselling and has not been validated in independent samples.

How Ethea adapts the model

Ethea's version compares each type with each of the other five across 30 pairs of activities (15 combinations, two rounds). The result produces a three-letter code, such as SAE, following Holland's convention, with suggested areas to explore. The example activities were written to make sense in Brazil and Latin America.

Test created by Giovanni Oliveira.

Ethea is not affiliated with the publishers that sell official instruments based on Holland's model or with the US Department of Labor.

References

Links with a DOI go to the original article. Where no DOI is given, the link opens a Google Scholar search.

1. Holland, J. L. (1997). Making Vocational Choices: A Theory of Vocational Personalities and Work Environments (3rd ed.). Psychological Assessment Resources. Search Google Scholar(opens in a new tab)
2. Nauta, M. M. (2010). The development, evolution, and status of Holland's theory of vocational personalities: Reflections and future directions for counseling psychology. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 57(1), 11–22. Search Google Scholar(opens in a new tab)
3. Rounds, J., & Tracey, T. J. (1996). Cross-cultural structural equivalence of RIASEC models and measures. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 43(3), 310–329. Search Google Scholar(opens in a new tab)
4. Nye, C. D., Su, R., Rounds, J., & Drasgow, F. (2012). Vocational interests and performance: A quantitative summary of over 60 years of research. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(4), 384–403. Search Google Scholar(opens in a new tab)
5. Su, R., Rounds, J., & Armstrong, P. I. (2009). Men and things, women and people: A meta-analysis of sex differences in interests. Psychological Bulletin, 135(6), 859–884. Search Google Scholar(opens in a new tab)
6. National Center for O*NET Development (n.d.). O*NET Resource Center. U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration. Search Google Scholar(opens in a new tab)
7. Hicks, L. E. (1970). Some properties of ipsative, normative, and forced-choice normative measures. Psychological Bulletin, 74(3), 167–184. DOI: 10.1037/h0029780(opens in a new tab)
8. Brown, A., & Maydeu-Olivares, A. (2011). Item response modeling of forced-choice questionnaires. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 71(3), 460–502. DOI: 10.1177/0013164410375112(opens in a new tab)
9. Brown, A., & Maydeu-Olivares, A. (2013). How IRT can solve problems of ipsative data in forced-choice questionnaires. Psychological Methods, 18(1), 36–52. DOI: 10.1037/a0030641(opens in a new tab)