Audrey Keith V.

Ordoñez
TCP – Child and Adolescent Psychology

“Vocational Interest Assessed at the End of High School Predict Life

Outcomes Assessed 10 Years Later Over and Above IQ and Big Five

Personality Traits”

By Gundala Stoll, Sven Rieger, Benjamin Nagengast, UrichTrautwein,

Oliver Ludke and Brent Roberts.

Summary

Vocational interest affects an individual’s lives, it is a facet of motivation that

reflects and describes what they desire; goals and personal strivings. These aspects

have an influence on an individual’s vocational outcomes and go beyond the vocational

domain. However, there are limited studies that suggest that vocational interest can

impact the life outcomes of an individual. To investigate the effects of vocational

interest in an individual’s life outcome, the researchers needed potential predictors of

life outcomes. In this study, the researchers opted to use the Big Five personality traits

alongside the researcher used of the RIASEC test (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic,

Social, Enterprising and Conventional) for vocational interest as possible predictors of

life outcomes.

Several studies suggest vocational interest influences an individual’s career

choice, how he performs at work and how he feels about it. It is used as a guide for

students to choose their career path. Most studies focus on vocational counseling that

studies the fit of interest and occupation in an individual, putatively to match their

preferences.
Audrey Keith V. Ordoñez
TCP – Child and Adolescent Psychology

On the contrary, the researchers used vocational interests as personality traits

for this study. The researchers proposed that vocational interests are comparable to

personality traits. Thus, vocational interests have a broad spectrum on the nature of an

individual. Not only that vocational interests influence the career outcome of an

individual, but it also reflects a cross-situational pattern of motivation that affects many

aspects of the domain in an individual’s life.

The study aims to investigate whether vocational interests would be possible

predictors of life outcomes. This study focuses on three domains; work, relationships

and health. This study would like to investigate whether vocational interest can predict;

(a) whether the respondents are full-time employees or not, (b) whether the

respondents will get married or have a stable relationship and (c) how do the

respondents perceive their health status.

The researchers opted to use vocational interests alongside with the Big Five

personality traits because past research has shown that other psychological variables

including the Big Five Personalities can predict important outcomes in work and health.

To examine whether vocational interest could further interpret variance in these

outcomes throughout the standard predictors of life outcomes. The researchers

conducted a series of regression analyses, including the vocation interests with the use

of RIASEC along with the Big Five personality traits. To better explain the incremental

validity of vocational interests, the researchers considered factors such as; gender,
Audrey Keith V. Ordoñez
TCP – Child and Adolescent Psychology

socioeconomic status, final school grade and cognitive ability as predictors. The

researchers expected that vocational interests to be significant predictors of later life

outcomes and to have incremental validity over and above the Big Five personality

traits.

Furthermore, an ongoing study from Transformation of the Secondary School

System and Academic Careers (TOSCA) that monitors the development of personality

into the initial stages of young adulthood of several thousand German teenagers. This

study was used by the researchers to support their longitudinal study and to further

review the possible outcomes or result with the study’s respondents.

In this study, the researchers opted to choose young adolescent as their

respondents. The respondents are 3023 students from 149 randomly selected schools in

German. All respondents in the study were given informed consent and token for their

participation in this longitudinal study. The first assessment took place when

respondents were in their final school year and succeeding assessments followed every

second year for 10 years. The respondents were contacted every second year and

completed all questionnaires, the researchers provided all participants token for their

participation. There were six waves for the data collection. The data collected by the

researchers for this study refer mainly to the first and sixth waves of data collection.
Audrey Keith V. Ordoñez
TCP – Child and Adolescent Psychology

The researchers would like to measure nine variables for this study, namely;

vocational interests, big five, cognitive ability, family socioeconomic background, final

school grade, outcomes measures, work-related outcomes, relationship outcomes, and

health-related outcomes. To measure vocational interest, the researchers used RIASEC

(Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising and Conventional). The researchers

used Big Five personality traits that are translated into German so that the respondents

will understand the questions better. The researchers measured the cognitive ability of

the respondents with figural and verbal analogy subtests of the cognitive abilities test, it

served as good markers of general or fluid intelligence. The information needed by the

researchers to measure family socioeconomic background and final school grade where

provided by the school and their parents. The researchers followed previous studies to

measure life outcomes and used the same model for this study. The researchers made

a dichotomous variable that measures work-related outcomes, relationship outcomes,

and health-related outcomes.

The researchers used both logistic and linear regression models, to predict the

described life outcomes. The researchers performed two-sided statistical tests using a

5% level of significance. The researchers specified logistic regression to predict binary

life outcomes.

In result, the researchers were able to predict that; 75.0% of the respondents

were employed full time, 48.3% had been affected by unemployment within the time
Audrey Keith V. Ordoñez
TCP – Child and Adolescent Psychology

period under consideration. 38.2% of the young adults were married 10 years after the

respondent’s graduation. 75% were in a stable relationship, 18.2% had children, and

8.3% had never had a relationship.

The resulted showed that based on the longitudinal study spanning the period

given of 10 years, it indicates that vocational interests are important predictors of life

outcomes. The result showed an incremental validity over the Big Five personality traits.

Thus, vocational interests showed a significant relationship towards the predictors of 7

out of 9 investigated outcomes; if they are employed or not, how much would they

receive as their salary, if they will get married, if they will have children and how they

perceive their health status. The researchers considered the Big Five personality traits

and control variables as possible predictors. In addition, vocational interests showed

stronger predictors for work and relationship outcomes than the Big Five personality

traits. The Big Five personality traits are a better predictor for health outcomes than

vocational interest.