Strong Vocational Interest Blank: Foundational interest inventory

About the Strong Vocational Interest Blank

By the early 1920s, vocational guidance was emerging as a professional field but lacked good measurement instruments. Aptitude tests measured what someone could do; nothing systematic measured what they would want to do. Edward K. Strong Jr. at Stanford set out to fill this gap.

Strong's empirical approach was novel: instead of asking subjects what occupations they liked, he asked them about 400 specific likes, dislikes, and preferences spanning activities, hobbies, school subjects, types of people, and so on. He then administered the same questionnaire to large samples of established professionals in many different occupations - lawyers, engineers, doctors, ministers, accountants, etc. The pattern of likes and dislikes of successful members of each occupation became the empirical 'occupational scale' for that occupation.

A new test-taker's responses could then be compared to each occupational scale: a high score on the 'engineer' scale meant the person's interest pattern resembled that of successful engineers - regardless of whether they had any specific interest in engineering itself. This was a methodological breakthrough.

The 1927 Strong VIB had scales for about 20 occupations; subsequent revisions expanded to 100+ scales. The test was administered to millions of US high-school and college students through the 1960s. The 1985 Strong Interest Inventory revision (still in active commercial use through CPP) uses the same empirical methodology with modern occupational scales.

The 1 subtests

Source

All test materials and historical content on this page are transcribed from:

The Strong VIB and its modern descendants remain under active CPP (Consulting Psychologists Press) copyright. We document its history and significance.