Structure of interests in employed male and female members of US racial-ethnic minority and nonminority groups.

Abstract

This study explored the structure of interests across large samples of employed U.S. racial-ethnic minority and nonminority adults drawn from over 38,000 individuals who were part of the 1994 revision of the Strong Interest Inventory (SII; L. W. Harmon, J. C. Hansen, F. H. Borgen, & A. C. Hammer, 1994; N = 805 African Americans, 795 Asian Americans, 36,632 Caucasians, and 686 Latinos-Hispanics). Correlation matrices from the general occupational themes of the SII were subjected to 2 analyses commonly used in structural analyses of Holland's themes: randomization test of hypothesized order relations and multidimensional scaling. Analyses tested whether the data fit the circular and equidistant hexagonal structure models. All of the data fit the circular model that corresponds to Holland's calculus assumption, but the data for women and for some of the male racial-ethnic groups did not fit the more stringent equidistant hexagonal structure.