What Are Vocational Interests?Inter

What Are Vocational Interests?
Interests have been studied from a situational and a dispositional point of view. Situational interests are transitory and context specific and are connected to emotional states aroused by specific features of an activity (Hidi, Renninger, & Krapp, 1992). Studied primarily within educational research, situational interests are related to students’ attention to material and persistence on learning tasks (Schraw & Lehman, 2001). Conversely, interests are also construed as an individual’s psychological disposition associated with his or her preferences for activities and actions. Both individual or academic interests in educational research and vocational interests in vocational/industrial–organizational psychology stem from the dispositional perspective. Academic interests are associated with facilitative effects on cognitive functioning, learning, and academic achievement (Schiefele, Krapp, & Winteler, 1992), whereas vocational interests, the focus of the present study, are premised on facilitating the fit between people and their environment to improve occupational success and satisfaction. In essence, academic interests and vocational interests refer to the same dispositional attribute. School subject preferences and choices are systematically related to vocational interests (Elsworth, HarveyBeavis, Ainley, & Fabris, 1999), and vocational interests have been systematically related to technical and college-level fields of study (Rosen, Holmberg, & Holland, 1994). The present study can complement the research within educational psychology by charting the developmental trajectory of interests beyond an individual’s typical school-age years.
Conceptual Perspectives
Because of its pragmatic focus on person–environment fit, vocational interest research has historically centered on the construction, validation, and interpretation of psychometric scales