Comparing Holland and Self-Determination Theory Measures of Career Preference as Predictors of Career Choice

Abstract

John Holland’s theory of career orientations advises people to select careers that are congruent with their personalities. Similarly, self-concordance theory, based in self-determination theory, advises people to select personal goals that match their autonomous interests and identifications. We compared the predictive efficacy of the two theories in two studies of undergraduates, using the six career areas of Holland theory (RIASEC: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional) as a common base. Multilevel logit modeling in Study 1 showed that both the Holland score and an aggregate self-concordance score predicted independent variance in the outcome variable, current career choices. These effects were replicated in Study 2. Supplementary analyses showed that the identified motivation subscale was the primary source of these effects. Thus, career counselors may want to consider assessing students’ self-concordance for the six RIASEC domains, in particular their levels of identified motivation for those domains, in addition to assessing their Holland codes.

Keywords

Holland assessment system motivation self-concordance career choice

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Armstrong

P. I.

Day

S. X.

McVay

J. P.

Rounds

(2008). Holland’s RIASEC model as an integrative framework for individual differences. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 55, 1.

Bai

Liao

H. Y.

(2018). The relation between interest congruence and college major satisfaction: Evidence from the basic interest measures. Journal of Career Assessment.

Barrick

M. R.

Mount

M. K.

Gupta

(2003). Meta-analysis of the relationship between the five-factor model of personality and Holland’s occupational types. Personnel Psychology, 56, 45–74.

Bates

Mächler

Bolker

Walker

(2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67, 1–48.

Betz

N. E.

Borgen

F. H.

Harmon

L. W.

(2006). Vocational confidence and personality in the prediction of occupational group membership. Journal of Career Assessment, 14, 36–55. doi:10.1177/1069072705282434

Betz

N. E.

Harmon

L. W.

Borgen

F. H.

(1996). The relationships of self-efficacy for the Holland themes to gender, occupational group membership, and vocational interests. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 43, 90.

Brunstein

J. C.

Schultheiss

O. C.

Grässman

(1998). Personal goals and emotional well-being: The moderating role of motive dispositions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 494–508. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.75.2.494

Career Dimensions, Inc. (2010). FOCUS-2: The online career & education planning system for students in colleges & universities (Technical Report). Center Harbor, NH: Author.

Career Dimensions, Inc. (2018). FOCUS-2. Retrieved from https://www.focus2career.com/

10.

Cattell

R. B.

Eber

H. W.

Tatsuoka

M. M.

(1970). Handbook for the 16 personality factor questionnaire. Champaign, IL: Institute for Personality and Ability Testing.

11.

Chang

M. K.

(1998). Predicting unethical behavior: A comparison of the theory of reasoned action and the theory of planned behavior. Journal of Business Ethics, 17, 1825–1834.

12.

Costa

P. T.

McCrae

R. R.

Holland

J. L.

(1984). Personality and vocational interests in an adult sample. Journal of Applied Psychology, 69, 390.

13.

Dawis

R. V.

Lofquist

L. H.

(1984). A psychological theory of work adjustment: An individual differences model and its application. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.

14.

Deci

E. L.

Ryan

R. M.

(1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. New York, NY: Plenum Press.

15.

Emmons

R. A.

(1989). The personal striving approach to personality. In Pervin

L. A.

(Ed.), Goal concepts in personality and social psychology (pp. 87–126). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

16.

Fouad

N. A.

Singh

Cappaert

Chang

W. H.

Wan

(2016). Comparison of women engineers who persist in or depart from engineering. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 92, 79–93.

17.

Goldberg

L. R.

(1999). A broad-bandwidth, public-domain, personality inventory measuring the lower-level facets of several five-factor models. In Mervielde

Deary

De Fruyt

Ostendorf

(Eds.), Personality psychology in Europe (Vol. 7, pp. 7–28). Tilburg, the Netherlands: Tilburg University Press.

18.

Hogg

M. A.

Terry

D. J.

White

K. M.

(1995). A tale of two theories: A critical comparison of identity theory with social identity theory. Social Psychology Quarterly, 58, 255–269.

19.

Holland

J. L.

(1959). A theory of vocational choice. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 6, 35.

20.

Holland

J. L.

(1997). Making vocational choices: A theory of vocational personalities and work environments. Lake Magdalene, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.

21.

Kahneman

(2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

22.

Kasser

(2002). Sketches for a self-determination theory of values. Handbook of Self-Determination Research, 123, 40.

23.

Koestner

Lekes

Powers

T. A.

Chicoine

(2002). Attaining personal goals: Self-concordance plus implementation intentions equals success. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 231–244.

24.

Larson

L. M.

Rottinghaus

P. J.

Borgen

F. H.

(2002). Meta-analyses of big six interests and big five personality factors. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 61, 217–239.

25.

Liao

H. Y.

Armstrong

P. I.

Rounds

(2008). Development and initial validation of public domain basic interest markers. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 73, 159–183.

26.

Marsh

H. W.

Craven

R. G.

Hinkley

J. W.

Debus

R. L.

(2003). Evaluation of the big-two-factor theory of academic motivation orientations: An evaluation of jingle-jangle fallacies. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 38, 189–224.

27.

Marsh

H. W.

Pekrun

Parker

P. D.

Murayama

Guo

Dicke

Arens

A. K.

(2019). The murky distinction between self-concept and self-efficacy: Beware of lurking jingle-jangle fallacies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111, 331.

28.

Matuschek

Kliegl

Vasishth

Baayen

Bates

(2017). Balancing Type I error and power in linear mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language, 94, 305–315.

29.

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, 11.

30.

Nigg

C. R.

Allegrante

J. P.

Ory

(2002). Theory-comparison and multiple-behavior research: Common themes advancing health behavior research. Health Education Research, 17, 670–679.

31.

Nye

C. D.

Rounds

Drasgow

(2012). Vocational interests and performance: A quantitative summary of over 60 years of research. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 384–403.

32.

R Development Core Team. (2008). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. ISBN 3-900051-07-0. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing . Retrieved from http://www.R-project.org

33.

Rottinghaus

P. J.

Betz

N. E.

Borgen

F. H.

(2003). Validity of parallel measures of vocational interests and confidence. Journal of Career Assessment, 11, 355–378.

34.

Ryan

R. M.

Connell

J. P.

(1989). Perceived locus of causality and internalization: Examining reasons for acting in two domains. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 749.

35.

Ryan

R. M.

Deci

E. L.

(2017). Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

36.

Sheldon

K. M.

(2009). Changes in goal-striving across the life span: Do people learn to select more self-concordant goals as they age? In Smith

M. C.

DeFrates-Densch

(Eds.), Handbook of research on adult learning and development (pp. 553–569). New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.

37.

Sheldon

K. M.

(2014). Becoming oneself: The central role of self-concordant goal selection. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 18, 349–365.

38.

Sheldon

K. M.

Elliot

A. E.

(1998). Not all personal goals are personal: Comparing autonomous and controlled reasons as predictors of effort and attainment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 546–557.

39.

Sheldon

K. M.

Elliot

A. J.

(1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being: The self-concordance model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 482.

40.

Sheldon

K. M.

Elliot

A. J.

(2000). Personal goals in social roles: Divergences and convergences across roles and levels of analysis. Journal of Personality, 68, 51–84.

41.

Sheldon

K. M.

Kasser

(1998). Pursuing personal goals: Skills enable progress, but not all progress is beneficial. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 1319–1331.

42.

Sheldon

K. M.

Osin

E. N.

Gordeeva

T. O.

Suchkov

D. D.

Sychev

O. A.

(2017). Evaluating the dimensionality of self-determination theory’s relative autonomy continuum. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43, 1215–1238.

43.

Sheldon

K. M.

Prentice

Osin

(2019). Rightly crossing the Rubicon: Evaluating goal self-concordance prior to selection helps people choose more intrinsic goals. Journal of Research in Personality, 79, 119–129.

44.

Sheldon

K. M.

Prentice

Halusic

Schüler

(2015). Matches between assigned goal-types and both implicit and explicit motive dispositions predict goal self-concordance. Motivation and Emotion, 39, 335–343. doi:10.1007/s11031-014-9468-4

45.

Sheldon

K. M.

Ryan

R. M.

Rawsthorne

L. J.

Ilardi

(1997). Trait self and true self: Cross-role variation in the Big-Five personality traits and its relations with psychological authenticity and subjective well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 1380.

46.

Tirpak

D. M.

Schlosser

L. Z.

(2013). Evaluating FOCUS-2’s effectiveness in enhancing first-year college students’ social cognitive career development. The Career Development Quarterly, 61, 110–123. doi:10.1002/j.2161-0045.2013.00041

47.

Tokar

D. M.

Swanson

J. L.

(1995). Evaluation of the correspondence between Holland’s vocational personality typology and the five-factor model of personality. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 46, 89–108. doi:10.1006/jvbe.1995.1006

48.

Tracey

T. J.

Hopkins

(2001). Correspondence of interests and abilities with occupational choice. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 48, 178.

49.

Vargas-Salfate

Paez

Liu

J. H.

Pratto

de Zúñiga

H. G.

(2018). A comparison of social dominance theory and system justification: The role of social status in 19 nations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44, 1060–1076.