Expressed, Manifest, Tested, and Inventoried Interests

No universally accepted conceptual definition of interests has emerged in vocational psychology. As a result, interests often are defined as what an assessment measures. At the most basic level, operational definitions of interests commonly focus on an individual's constellation or pattern of likes and dislikes for vocational, academic, and leisure activities, as well as for types of occupations, settings, and people. Donald Super organized these operational definitions into four methodological categories: expressed interests, manifest or evidenced interests, tested interests, and inventoried interests.

Frank Parsons, an early career specialist, introduced a parsimonious framework in his widely known book Choosing a Vocation that provided an impetus for the measurement of interests. Parsons (1909) argued that individuals seeking to choose a line of work should engage in a rigorous process of self-study during which they consider how their “capacities, interests, resources, and limitations, and their causes” (p. 5) might best fit with the attributes of certain occupations. Parsons intended this process of self-study to occur with the aid of a counselor, and he offered a variety of innovative methods for counselors to assess a client's personal characteristics.

Among these methods, Parsons presented a questionnaire that asked respondents to simply identify and write down their interests as well as the nature of those interests. According to Super's classification system, Parsons's questionnaire elicited expressed interests. In other words, expressed interests are those that an individual is able to articulate via introspection without the assistance of a list of options. For example, in response to the question, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” one could state an occupation (e.g., medical doctor) or an activity (e.g., care for others). Expressed interests are highly subjective in nature and tend not to be limited to certain content areas or levels of specificity. Furthermore, expressed interests reflect how an individual perceives his or her interests rather than provide an objective and complete picture of his or her interests.

A more objective method of assessing interests, also proposed by Parsons, involved asking clients to report how they spend their time, particularly outside of work. For instance, if an individual spends his or her evenings reading novels and writing poetry, then these behaviors may indicate an interest in literature or the humanities. These manifest or evidenced interests have been described as those measured by observing or examining an individual's participation in activities. The most objective form of manifest interests involves direct observations of an individual's behavior over time, whereas the most subjective form involves an individual's self-reported activities.

In addition to reporting how one has previously spent his or her time, Parsons (1909) further suggested that individuals, particularly young individuals with little breadth of experience, should attempt to gather a variety of experiences to bring their “true interests and aptitudes into clear relief” (p. 12). This effort to accumulate a variety of work experiences with the intention of identifying one's interests was later known as try out activities. As Parsons and others have suggested, try outs are based on the hypothesis [Page 1538]that experience allows latent interests to emerge into an individual's awareness.

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