Translation and Validation of the Chinese Form of the Strong Interest Inventory

A Chinese form of the 1994 Strong Interest Inventory (SII) was developed through a three‐step translation process. The translated version was judged to show linguistic or inferential equivalence to the SII in English. Field‐testing data based on two Chinese samples ( N ₁ = 124, N ₂ = 40) and one American sample ( N ₃ = 52) provided additional support on metric equivalence between the SII and the SII‐Chinese. Correlational analysis, paired t ‐test, and profile analysis consistently demonstrated that the SII and SII‐Chinese yielded highly comparable results at all three levels of measurement—General Occupational Themes (GOT), Basic Interest Scales (BIS), and Occupational Scales (OS). Statistically significant difference between the SII and SII‐Chinese was found only on one basic scale and two occupational scales in selected male and female subsamples. Factor analysis, using maximum likelihood extraction and oblique rotation, identified six broad occupational interest dimensions on the SII‐Chinese: Enterprising (E), Investigative (I), Artistic (A), Public (P), Realistic (R), and Social (S). Implications for further adapting the SII‐Chinese to better fit the Chinese culture and to be used as an assessment tool in China are discussed.