A theory of careers encounters sex: Reply to Holland (1976)

This paper is the third in a series beginning with a report (by the authors) of research on the application of Holland's theory of careers to women and men. Holland's response, “The Virtues of the SDS …” is considered, in particular, research he cites on the effect of the Self-Directed Search (SDS) on counselees and his advocacy of raw score reports of personality patterns. The widely divergent career options suggested to men and women by SDS raw scores are noted and misunderstandings concerning the implications of Holland's assessment procedures for his theory are discussed. Holland's defense of raw score reports of personality characteristics is found wanting, especially in light of the support provided for his theory by normed scores.     

Validity of sex-balanced interest inventory scales

The purpose of this study was to examine the relative effectiveness of sex-balanced and sex-restrictive raw score interest scales in discriminating among vocational preference groups. Analyses were conducted separately for 502 males in six vocational preference groups and 878 females in five vocational preference groups. The degree and nature of the discrimination among groups were highly similar for the two types of scales for both males and females. Centour scores derived from sex-balanced and sex-restrictive raw scores resulted in essentially the same percentages of correct classifications of group membership. The results of this study suggest that the large sex differences traditionally found in interest inventory items may not be a necessary concomitant of validity. Hence, interest inventory reports that reflect these differences may unnecessarily restrict the career suggestions they provide to women and men.     

A Vocational interest test minus sex bias

The Vocational Preference Inventory responses from 290 subjects (110 males and 180 females) were subjected to a Rasch item analysis, one of a class of latent trait models. After elimination of 22 items which did not fit the model, a sex-free form of the VPI was obtained. Group interest scale scores are presented for each of the Holland scales and data are produced which indicate that no violence was done to the Holland coding system.     

An analysis of Holland's interest types for women: A comparison of the Strong-Holland and the ACT vocational interest profile scales for women

The purpose of this paper was to examine the basic vocational interest dimensions of women. Two interest inventories designed to measure the six interest dimensions described by Holland (1966) were administered to 126 university freshman women. The correlations between corresponding scales of the two instruments was generally high and application of the spatial configuration analysis resulted in the expected circular ordering found in previous studies. The usefulness of the basic interest dimensions when counseling with women was discussed from a practical and a theoretical point of view.     

Deux cadres méthodo-épistémologiques du testing structurant la construction et l’adaptation de tests,références incontournables mais,hélas,largement ignorées. Illustration à partir de cinq revues françaises de psychologie

The purpose of this article is to present two current methodo-epistemological frameworks for test and testing procedures, namely the Standards for Education and Psychological Testing (AERA, APA, NCME, 2014), and the ITC Guidelines for Translating and Adapting Tests (2017). These two frameworks were designed to serve as “universal” references shaping the construction and adaptation of psychological tests and scales. However, a review of articles published in five French journals shows that these two frameworks are largely ignored. Their dissemination could improve good practices in construction and cross-cultural adaptation of psychological tests and scales.     

Does retrieval practice depend on semantic cues? Assessing the fuzzy trace account of the testing effect

Retrieval practice enhances long-term retention more than restudying; a phenomenon called the testing effect. The fuzzy trace explanation predicts that a testing effect will already emerge after a short interval when participants are solely provided with semantic cues in the final test. In the present study, we assessed this explanation by gradually reducing the surface features overlap between cues in the learning phase and the final recognition test. In all five experiments, participants in the control/word condition received as final test cues the same words as in the learning phase. The experimental final test cues consisted of scrambled words, words in a new context, scrambled words in a new context (Experiment 1), synonyms (Experiment 2), or images (Experiments 3, 4a, 4b). A short-term testing effect was only observed for the image final test cues. These results do not provide strong support for the fuzzy trace explanation of the testing effect.