Douglas R. Whitney

A spatial configuration of occupations

Abstract A mathematical analysis of the relationships among the six scales of Hollands Vocational Preference Inventory (VPI) yielded a representation of the six VPI scales in a “best-fitting” plane. The projection of VPI means of occupational groups onto that plane gave a spatial map of occupations in which the degree of relatedness was represented by the distance in the plane. The planar configuration was used to measure several concepts of vocational psychology and to test two initial hypotheses.

Two Generalizations of the Item Discrimination Index to Multi-Score Items.

Two general item analysis indices which apply to multi-score items are developed as generalizations of a popular index applicable to dichotomous items. The indices of discrimination are of two types: one based on differential difficulty and the other on net number of positive discriminations. The usefulness and limitations of each are discussed.

Effect of Two Selected Item-Writing Practices on Test Difficulty, Discrimination, and Reliability

AbstractIn order to investigate the effect of two item-writing practices on test characteristics, examinations were chosen for study in two undergraduate courses (N = 71 and 210) . About one-fourth of the items on each examination included a practice generally regarded as undesirable in measurement textbooks and alleged to make test items more difficult. Alternate forms which eliminated the undesirable practice were developed and administered at the same time as the original form. Rewriting item stems so that they formed a complete sentence or question resulted in about 6 percent more students answering items correctly. Eliminating unnecessary material in item stems, however, had little effect on difficulty. KR20 values were not appreciably different for the two versions of either test. Neither flaw was found to affect item discrimination indices noticeably. The absence of any substantial practice-by-achievement level interactions suggested little effect of the practices on the validity of the tests.

7: Career Development

During the last three years an increasing number of people, professions and organizations have concerned themselves with vocational training, access to vocational training and jobs, vocational counseling, vocational choice, and careers. This increased interest and its associated financial support have attracted so many new investigators to the field of vocational behavior and stimulated the work of others to the extent that a comprehensive review is no longer possible. Consequently, only the more limited area of career development is treated in this review. The research published during the period of April 1965 to July 1968 was reviewed for this chapter. However, the chapter authors have included only those publications which they considered to be useful scientific contributions and genuine elements of career development (vocational theory, vocational choice, work history). The articles and papers which were selected include speculation about these behaviors and the determinants, predictions, classifications, and patterns of vocational preferences for various intervals of time. For earlier, closely related reports, the reader should see reviews by Perrone (1966) and Tennyson (1968).