Jackson Vocational Interest Survey

The Jackson Vocational Interest Survey (JVIS; publisher: Research Psychologists Press) was developed by Douglas N. Jackson to assist high school students, college students, and adults with career and educational planning. The survey is a self-report instrument that takes around 45 to 60 minutes to complete. The survey provides information on areas and patterns of vocational interests, together with indications of the similarity of a test taker's interests to those of individuals in various occupational and academic areas.

The JVIS profile includes 34 Basic Interests Scales. The definitions of these scales are based on a conceptualization of occupational preferences in terms of work roles and work styles. Work roles refer to relatively homogeneous samples of work activity, such as Teaching and Law. Work styles refer to preferences for working environments that require demonstration of behaviors such as Planfulness and Independence. The 34 Basic Interests Scales have been factor analyzed to identify 10 underlying dimensions. These dimensions, labeled as General Occupational Themes Scales on the JVIS profile, represent broad patterns of vocational interests, such as Expressive and Conventional.

In addition, an Academic Satisfaction Scale was empirically derived by comparing the average scores of high school and university students on the Basic Interests Scales. This scale may be useful in predicting degree of satisfaction in traditional academic settings. The profile also reports indices of the similarity between the test taker's Basic Interests Scales profile and the profiles of college students in 17 broad clusters of academic majors and employees in 32 job groups. The extended JVIS report contains further information related to career exploration.

Three useful administrative scales are the Unscorable Response, the Response Consistency Index, and the Infrequency Index. Internal consistency reliability of individual profiles can be determined on the basis of the Response Consistency Index. A combination of the Response Consistency Index and the Infrequency Index provides evidence of validity for the profile scores.

The most recent normative sample was collected in 1999. The sample consisted of 1,750 males and 1,750 females from Canada and the United States. Among these 3,500 individuals, 2,380 were secondary students and 1,120 were university and college students and adults seeking career-interest assessment.

The internal consistency reliability (coefficients alpha) of the Basic Interests Scales based on the normative sample ranges from .54 to .88, with a median of .72. The internal consistency reliability for the 10 General Occupational Themes Scales ranges from .81 to .93, with a median of .88. The median test-retest reliability of the Basic Interests Scales and the General Occupational Themes Scales, based on a sample of university students, is .84 and .89, respectively.

One exemplary characteristic of the JVIS is the method used to construct the scales. Items on the JVIS were selected on the basis of a combination of construct and internal consistency criteria from a pool of more then 3,000 items. Another notable feature of the JVIS is the equal emphasis on the measurement of interests of women and men.