Career Key

Author: Career Key's President and CEO, Juliet Wehr Jones, GCDF, J.D.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Career Clusters Interest Survey Validity Questioned in Recent Study

The Career Clusters Interest Survey (CCIS) is a scientifically invalid measure for measuring your students' or clients' interests for choosing a Career Cluster or Career Pathway, according to Dominic R. Prime and Terence Tracey's article "Psychometric Properties of the Career Clusters Interest Survey" in the May 2010 Journal of Career Assessment (JCA). It's available through your public or local university library.

The first study ever done of the CCIS, offered by the States' Career Clusters Initiative, shows that the CCIS has serious flaws. For example, it does not measure 3 of the 6 Holland personality types, specifically the Conventional, Realistic, and Investigative personality types.

According to the JCA article, "[u]sing the CCIS to guide students could result in a very restricted examination of occupations." 

If you'd like to use an affordable, scientifically valid measure of Holland's 6 personality types to match students' interests with career clusters and career pathways, please visit our "Choosing a Career Cluster, Field or Pathway" article at The Career Key website. You can download a map that shows how the clusters and pathways are related to interests, the Holland personality types, and occupations.

The Journal of Career Assessment article mentions other scientifically valid measures as alternatives to the Career Clusters Interest Survey if you want to explore more.

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