Career Counseling & Guidance CSL6803.21

1. Career Counseling & GuidanceCSL6803.21 Winter 2011 1/8/11 Additional Slides

2. Description of the Strong • 317-item inventory • Designed to provide “compare [an individual's] pattern of responses to the pattern of responses of people in of different types and in different occupations" • First published in 1927 • Designed to provide information about the world of work, and to promote occupational exploration by assessing an individual's pattern of interests.

3. Strong: Sections • Six General Occupational Themes based on Holland’s (1997) typology, • 25 Basic Interest Scales • 211 Occupational Scales • 4 personal style scales: Work Style, Learning Environment, Risk Taking, and Leadership Style. • Administrative indices show the number of total responses; percentages of the like, indifferent, and dislike responses; and infrequent or unpopular responses.

4. Strong: Additional information • Time to complete: ½ hour • Reading level: sixth grade. • Age level: 17 and older, because young respondents do not have stable interest patterns. • Scoring service must be used. • Output: profiles or interpretations

5. Strong: Norms • The General Occupational Themes Basic Interest Scales and Personal Style Scales were normed on 9,484 men and 9467 women; this represents men and women in each of the occupational groups collected as criterion groups for the 1994 revision. • The mean for both sexes is set at a standard score of 50 and a standard deviation of 10.

6. Strong: Occupational Scale Norms • Normed on those employed in the Occupation. • Occupational members met four basic criteria: 1) age (at least 25 years old), 2) tenure (had been in their occupation for at least 3 years), 3) satisfaction with their work, and 4) pursuit of typical occupational tasks. • Most occupational groups contained 200 or more members; • The mean and standard deviation for each group are 50 and 10, respectively.

7. Strong Interest Inventory • General Occupational Themes—what am I like? Based on Holland’s themes. • Basic Interest Scales– what do I like? • Occupational Scales- who am I like?

8. Strong: Validity and reliability • Very high reliability for all scales • the older the group, the more reliable the test scores • Each type of scale has concurrent validity, that is that persons in an occupation score higher on their own scales. • 50-75% of individuals tested entered the occupations predicted by their profiles.

9. Strong: Cross-cultural Validity • Few racial/ethnic differences found at the item level. • Even fewer differences were found at the scale or profile level. • It is important to note, though, that no research has examined whether interpretations are generalizable across cultures. • Gender differences greater than race/ethnic group differences.