A hierarchical model for the structure of vocational interests

In this study a hierarchical model for the structure of vocational interests is proposed. Theoretical and methodological considerations, reanalysis of the C. E. Lunneborg and P. E. Lunneborg (Journal of Vocational Behavior, 1975, 7, 313–326) data, and an alternative interpretation of existing findings suggest that this model accounts for the interrelations among the vocational interest fields better than the hexagonal-circular models, or the four-factorial structure proposed by Lunneborg and Lunneborg (1975). The implications of this hierarchical model for vocational theory and some applications in vocational guidance are discussed.     

Congruence and consistency derived from the circular and the hierarchical models as predictors of Occupational Choice Satisfaction

Peiser and Meir (Journal of Vocational Behavior, 1978, 12, 270–278) tested the predictability of Occupational Choice Satisfaction (OCS) using Holland's constructs of congruence and consistency as applied to Roe's classification of occupations and the circular structure of vocational interests. In the present study congruence and consistency are applied to the same data, but the constructs are defined according to the hierarchical model for the structure of interests (I. Gati,Journal of Vocational Behavior, 1979, 15, 90–106). The hierarchical and the circular models are found to be of similar efficiency in predicting OCS by congruence and by consistency. Each model, however, has its unique and distinctive predictions, and thus they seem to complement each other rather than to compete.     

On the perceived structure of occupations

Previous studies aimed at testing the structure of occupations have been based on analysis of aggregate data. In studies comparing the hierarchical and the hexagonal-circular models for the structure of interests, the former fit the data at least as well as the latter. The present study compared separately for each subject the hierarchical and the hexagonal models as the hypothesized structures for occupations. Twenty-six students judged the similarity between all possible pairs of 24 high-level occupations, 3 occupations for each of Roe's eight fields. The findings demonstrated that (a) the within-subject structures resemble the structure found in the aggregate data; (b) the structure of occupations based on similarity judgments resembles the structure based on preference data; (c) diagnostic properties suggest that for most subjects the perceived structure of occupations can be better described as clustering than as two-dimensional; (d) a tree representation of the perceived structure of occupations is more adequate than is the two-dimensional representation; and (e) the within-subject structure fit the hierarchical model better than it fit the hexagonal-circular model for all but one subject. A detailed analysis revealed those predictions of each model which were disconfirmed by most subjects' judgments. These results provide additional support for the relative advantage of the hierarchical over the circular model. These findings' implications for the structure of vocational interests and occupational choice were discussed.     

Congruency,consistency, and differentiation of vocational interests as predictors of vocational satisfaction and preference stability

The Ramak interest inventory (Meir, E. I. Manual for the Ramak and Courses interest inventories, 1975; Barak, A. & Meir, E. I. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 1974, 4, 377–387), together with an occupational choice satisfaction (OCS) inventory, was administered to 158 males and 202 females who had responded to the Ramak 7 years before. The results of the study show: (a) congruence (Holland, J. L. Making vocational choices, 1973) correlated positively with males' and females' OCS (p < .01), while consistency and differentiation correlated with males' OCS when vocational interests were congruent with occupational field; (b) congruency, consistency, and differentiation all had a positive effect on OCS of males (p < .05); (c) when there was incongruency, no negative correlations between consistency and differentiation on the one hand and OCS on the other were found; (d) for males and females, positive correlations (p < .05) were found between congruency, consistency, differentiation, and stability of occupational interests; and (e) differentiation measured in percentages was found valid twice. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Measuring women's interests using Holland's vocational classification

A Hebrew interest inventory for females in Israel, based on Holland's 1966 1973 vocational classification, was examined on 322 female pupils and 167 working females. Results showed that: (a) with the exception of the Conventional and Enterprising fields, subjects occupied in a field had their highest interest score in that field; (b) for all six interest fields, the highest interest score was the score of those who were engaged in that field; (c) in a smallest space analysis, the activities, competencies, and occupation sections of the interest inventory formed the Investigative, Realistic, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional circular arrangement; (d) a correlation of .38 between interest score and job satisfaction was found.     

A simple instrument for measuring vocational interests based on Roe's classification of occupations

A vocational interests inventory-“Ramak”-based on Roe's (1956) classification of occupations was constructed. It consisted of 72 names of occupations. Equivalent-test reliability of 0.76 was achieved. The inventory was validated on working samples and by the structure of intercorrelations. The advantages of this inventory are discussed.     

Yesterday,today and tomorrow

1260 American subjects were timed as they responded to one of the three questions (‘What day of the week is today?’ (Tod question), ‘What day of the week was yesterday?’ (Y question), and ‘What day of the week will tomorrow be?’ (Tom question)) at one of three times of the day (early morning, mid-day and the late evening). Response times as a function of the day on which the question was posed defined an inverted U-curve for all questions in all three conditions. The Tod question always triggered the fastest responses. In the morning, responses to the Y question were faster than responses to the Tom questions, whereas in the evening the converse was the case. At mid-day responses to the Y question were faster than responses to the Tom question at the beginning of the week and slower than those at its end. The patterns of introspection associated with the responses also defined reversed U-functions. The results are interpreted in the framework of a multi-channel spreading activation model.     

Self-assessment and task performance

The present study tested the idea that the amount of effort expended in task performance is a function of the amount of uncertainty in one's ability level the resulting outcomes are expected to reduce. Two determinants of expected uncertainty reduction were manipulated: prior uncertainty about one's ability level and the diagnosticity of the task. Subjects first performed an initial task and then received fictitious feedback to manipulate their prior uncertainty. To induce low uncertainty, the feedback implied that the subjects are highly likely to have either low, intermediate, or a high level of ability. To induce high uncertainty, the feedback implied that the various ability levels were equally probable. Subjects then performed a task whose perceived diagnosticity regarding the ability under consideration was varied. As expected, subjects who were highly uncertain about their ability level performed better than subjects who were relatively certain they possessed either low, intermediate, or a high level of ability. Performance also improved with task diagnosticity, and the effect of task diagnosticity on performance was more pronounced when prior uncertainty was high than when it was low. Past research on the relationship between prior feedback and subsequent performance was discussed in light of the present results and a self-assessment model of achievement behavior.     

Processing the information contained in another's behavior

This study investigates attributions based on behavior congruent with situational demands (in-role) and those based on behavior incongruent with situational demands (out-of-role). By analyzing these processes in terms of a Bayesian inference model, it was possible to determine (a) the diagnostic values observers intially assign to behaviors, (b) the actual informational impact of these behaviors, and (c) the degree of optimality in processing information contained therein. The main results can be summarized as follows: (1) The diagnostic value and actual informational impact of out-of-role behaviors were much higher than those of inrole behaviors. (2) Information about out-of-role behaviors was less optimally processed than information about in-role behaviors. (3) Observers assigned smaller diagnostic values to behaviors which were described in great detail than to behaviors which were described in summary statements. (4) Observers' attitudes influenced their initial beliefs about the actors but not the processing of new information about the actor. (5) The Bayesian inference model predicted observers' inferences reasonably well.     

A disposition-behavior congruity model of perceived freedom

Three experiments were conducted to test a disposition-behavior congruity model of perceived freedom. The model was applied to attributions of freedom to actors who possess one of several dispositions and who can choose a behavior that is congruent or incongruent with this disposition. The model posits that attributions of freedom to an actor can be predicted from the conditional probabilities that the actor would choose each behavior available to him if he possessed the disposition congruent with it. This hypothesis was supported. However, contrary to expectations, the contribution to judgment of each conditional probability was not a function of the probability that the actor actually possessed the behavior-congruent disposition.     

A developmental study of the role of word order in comprehending Hebrew

Monolingual Hebrew-speaking subjects, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 11 years old, as well as adults, were asked to interpret utterances consisting of two nouns and a verb. Some utterances included only word order cues while others included direct object marker and subject-verb gender agreement cues. Even though Hebrew word order is relatively free, when subjects used word order as an interpretive cue they generally assigned sentence relations according to the dominant SVO order of modern Hebrew. This trend was less strong for the interpretations of NNV utterances than of NVN and VNN utterances. There was no evidence of a developmental sequence for word order strategies. In addition, there was no evidence that word order, for any age group, was necessarily a dominant cue for assigning sentence relations when other linguistic information was available.     

Information-gathering strategies in hypothesis-testing

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the informational factors affecting the kinds of questions people ask for testing a hypothesis about another's personality. In Experiment 1, subjects formulated by themselves questions to test either the hypothesis that the interviewee is polite or the hypothesis that he is impolite. The boundary of the hypothesis was set either at an extreme or at an intermediate point on the trait dimension. Experiment 2 also varied the location of the boundary, but the hypotheses concerned extroversion-introversion and subjects chose questions from a predetermined list of questions that asked either about extroverted features or introverted features and that were either low or high in diagnostic value. Both studies found that subjects preferred to ask about features that are consistent with the hypothesis only when the boundary was extreme. In contrast, diagnostic features were preferred in all conditions. Experiment 3 showed that subjects' judgment of the diagnosticity of the various kinds of questions for discriminating at different boundaries paralleled subjects' preferences among these questions. These results were interpreted as providing support for the diagnostic strategy in social information gathering.     

Developmental differences in memory for temporally neutral and temporally tagged information

Forty children (ages 7 and 11 years) listened to stories and then answered questions about temporally neutral and temporally tagged information appearing in them (e.g., “Linda is smart” vs “Linda ate an apple”). Number of presentations and free recall of the stories were manipulated to study age-related changes in the effects of additional processing on memory for the two kinds of information. Older children exhibited overall better memory, but with additional processing that difference was larger for temporally neutral than for temporally tagged information. The observed interactions among age, additional processing, and kind of information demonstrated the importance of the distinction between temporally neutral and temporally tagged information for developmental studies of memory for prose.     

Piaget's theory of space perception in infancy.

Piaget's theory of space perception in infancy is presented in the format of a hypothetico-deductive system. Eleven hypotheses are defined, regarding the perception of the agent of visual change; shape and size constancy; depth; and the perception of higher-order relationships among spatial elements. The proof Piaget offers for each hypothesis is presented in the following steps: behavioral evidence, interpretation in terms of inner states; inferences and generalizations. Presuppositions underlying the arguments are explicated. Critical notes are inserted whenever appropriate. Some general conclusions are briefly discussed.     

Lateralization effects in lexical decision tasks

Subjects were timed as they judged whether items presented to them were English words or not. Comparisons were made between responses to nouns and to verbs, on the one hand, and between concrete and abstract nouns, on the other hand. No asymmetries were found.     

Life history and vocational interests

To obtain some information concerning the antecedents of various forms of vocational interests, scores on the 22 basic interest scales of the Strong Vocational Interest Blank (SVIB) were correlated with 389 life history or autobiographical data items. Items yielding significant correlations were clustered on the basis of item content. The clusters obtained for the business management, science, and adventure scales are presented and discussed. Subsequently, certain general conclusions are drawn concerning the life history correlates of inventoried vocational interests.     

Some antecedents of work-nonwork conflict

This study examined the relationships of three aspects of work schedules—shiftwork, length of workday, and work during weekends and holidays—with the perceived interrole conflict between work and nonwork. Personal background variables and characteristics of the work role itself were hypothesized to be directly related to the level of conflict and, in addition, to moderate the work schedules-conflict relationships. Subjects were 286 hotel employees. As expected all three aspects of work schedules were related to the level of felt work-nonwork conflict. Personal background variables were not related in any way to the level of conflict. Job satisfaction and organizational role conflict were found to be directly related to the level of interrole conflict and, in addition, to moderate the work schedules-conflict relationships. Together, job-related variables and the interactions among them accounted for over 50% of the variance in work-nonwork conflict.     

Sequential development of helping behavior: A cognitive-learning approach

It is suggested that cognitive, social-perspective, and moral skills, on the one hand, and a self-regulatory skill on the other, determine the extent, quantity, and quality of helping acts. A framework for the analysis of helping behavior development by integrating cognitive-development- and social-learning approaches is suggested. The framework proposes that altruistic behavior is a specific, highest-level kind of helping behavior. Helping behavior develops sequentially as its quality changes. The quality of the helping behavior is reflected in individuals' motivation to act. Empirical evidence supporting the suggested framework is presented, and the contribution of this framework for the study of prosocial behavior is discussed.     

Memory functioning as related to developmental changes in bases of organization

Two series of object drawings classifiable according to either color or conceptual category were used: one to assess dimensional salience and the other to assess free recall, clustering, and cued recall. Parallel shifts in dimensional salience and the dominance of these dimensions as organizing principles in memory were investigated in nursery school and second- and fifth-grade children. Nursery school children manifested color salience, whereas the two older groups manifested conceptual salience. Above chance clustering according to the salient dimension in each age group and some increase in the size of organization units as a function of age were found. Within age groups, neither amount nor dimension or clustering were related to amount of recall. In each group, more words were accessed by salient than by nonsalient cues. Effectiveness of nonsalient cues depended on the order of presentation for young children, whereas for older chilren they were ineffective regardless of order. Implications of these findings for encoding and retrieval processes in children were discussed.     

The vocational side of a new start in life: A career model of immigrants

The research tests a career model of immigrants with the following stages: crystallization, vocational retraining, job entry and trial, establishment, and maintenance. Two samples of immigrants, one consisting of 89 newcomers and another consisting of 60 white-collar workers with an average seniority of 5 years in the country, are followed up during a period of 2 years, after initially taking a test battery measuring vocationally relevant traits. Dependent criterion variables are occupational government examinations and adjustment to the job. Smallest space analysis is used to construct the career space of the newcomer cohort, and multiple regression of criterion variables on success predictors was performed. Both methods confirmed the model. The need arose to reconsider the duration of career stages of immigrants and their link to certain ages in comparison to the models in use. The research brought into focus the continuity of the process of career reconstruction after the interruption of vocational activity caused by emigration.