College Women's Holland-Theme Congruence. Effects of Self-Knowledge and Subjective Occupational Structure

In the present study we examined personality/occupational choice congruence as a function of self-knowledge of personality and consistency of occupational perceptions with a task-oriented hexagonal model of work proposed by Holland. Volunteers were 94 college women who completed the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory (SCII) to measure Holland personality and a self-ranking on the six Holland themes to measure self-knowledge. They expressed perceived similarities among the six Holland occupational environments by rating all possible pairs of the types on a numerical similarity/dissimilarity scale. Convergence between a subject's self-ranking of personality and her SCII-derived personality profile defined "self-knowledge." Correlation between a subject's similarity ratings among pairs of environments and distances in Holland's hexagon determined the degree to which perceptions were consistent with a hexagonal model. Results indicated a statistically significant relation between congruence and both self-knowledge and hexagonal subjective occupational structure.