Kuder Occupational Interest Survey

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Industrial & Organisational : Introduction : Personnel : Organizational psychology : Occupations: Work environment: Index : Outline

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The Kuder Occupational Interest Survey ("The Kuder") is a self-report vocational interest test used for vocational guidance and counseling. It originated in the work of G. Frederic Kuder who first began publishing on the instrument in 1939. The Kuder is often compared to other vocational interest tests, such as The Strong Interest Inventory. Whereas the Strong compares the interests of the person to those of certain groups of people holding certain occupations, the Kuder focuses on measuring the person's broad areas of interest. Thus, th e Kuder will yield the person's scores along ten vocational interest scales:

• Outdoor,
• Mechanical,
• Clerical,
• Computational,
• Scientific,
• Literary,
• Social Service,
• Persuasive,
• Artistic, and
• Musical.

The test results are presented as percentile scores, and the report lists them separately for men and women. It then compares the person's scores on these scales to scores obtained by people holding certain professons and lists the top matches. It will also report the match between the examinee's interests and the interests reported by representative samples of students majoring in certain academic fields. The survey itself is a paper-and-pencil test that consists of 100 forced-choice triads of activities. For each triad, the person marks the activity preferred most and preferred least, leaving his or her intermediate choice blank. The test usually takes about 30 minutes to complete. It is published by Science Research Associates, Inc. in Chicago, IL. Professionals who purchase the test pay for the self-report blanks and then mail them to the company to obtain a score report.

Psychometric properties

Internal consistency of the vocational interest scales range from .47-.85 with a median of .66. Median stability estimate over 2 weeks was .80 for the vocational interest scales and .90 for the specific occupation scales. Validity research has generally been based on “hit rates” (the scale scores matching the actual occupations of the research participants) and factor analyses. The Kuder has a dependability scale that may indicate caution in interpreting the results if there are indications that the person's interests "are not settled".

See also

Vocational choice

Additional material

Papers

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