Psychological Testing and Measurement (PSY-P631) VU

Lesson 39
Measuring Personal Characteristics for Job Placement

Imagine if you had to advise a friend in job selection. Suppose that friend has two job options available
with similar salary packages and located at same distance from home
What factors do we generally consider while taking such a decision?
Personal interest and aptitude? The skills and ability that the person has? The work place and the work
setting? The prospective boss and colleagues? Or maybe all of these factors?
You are very well familiar with the role and significance of personal interests in career choice. We have
discussed in detail the various tests and tools that can be used for the assessment of personal interests. But
tests of interests are not the only measures that help in identifying whether a person is suitable for the job
or not. In other words we have available a variety of other tests also for choosing the best person for the
job.
Also, a number of assessment tools have been developed to assist you if you were to find out if you had
the skills required for a job, or if the job or the work place was what you were made for.
Psychologists have developed a variety of measures that can gauge the suitability of individuals for a
particular job by taking into account their personal characteristics as well as the features of the work setting.
Different psychologists have proposed different theories in this regard. Based on these theories a number
of assessment tools have been developed.

Osipow’s Vocational Dimensions Approach: The Trait Factor Approach:

One psychologist who is best known for the use of trait factor approach for job decision making is Samuel
Osipow. One can see that he has a global approach i.e., that considers a number of traits or let us say aspects
of a person’s personality. In this approach a number of tests, a battery of tests, are used for assessment.
The battery includes a variety of tests such as; the Kuder Occupational Interest Survey (Kuder, 1979),
Strong- Campbell interest Inventory (Campbell, 1974), Seashore Measure of Musical Talents (Lezak, 1983),
and Purdue Pegboard (Fleishman& Quaintance, 1984).
This approach gives quite comprehensive information regarding the traits and interests of the person.
However, it is criticized for not taking much into account the work environment Nevertheless this approach
is found to be very useful in helping people make occupational decisions.

Roe’s Career- choice Theory: The California Occupational Preference Survey:

The core feature of Roe’s theory is its emphasis on ‘person’ or ‘nonperson’ orientation found in people.
According to Roe, this orientation plays a significant role in people’s career choice. In simpler terms maybe
we can say that whether one likes to be with pother people or not affects one’s career choice. The
person/people - oriented people would be looking for jobs where they are in contact with other people e.g.
Arts, entertainment, or other services.
The individuals who are not people- oriented would be seeking jobs that involve little interpersonal contact
e.g. lab work, science and technology, field exploration etc. Roe drew some very interesting conclusions
from extensive examination of the personalities of scientists. These scientists were working in different
areas of study.
Roe proposes that career choices that people make in life are a result of their childhood experiences of
relationship with their families. That is to say that people with different types of experiences of relationships
with their family as a child will make different career choices.
According to Roe, whether people, as children, were reared in a warm family environment or a cold and
aloof one determines if they are interested in other people or not. Children brought up in a family
environment that is warm and accepting grow into people- oriented adults. On the other hand children
who experienced a cold and aloof environment turn into adults who are interested in things rather than
people (Roe & Klos,1969; Roe & Siegelman, 1964). Roe and Klos (1969) proposed the idea that
occupational roles can be divided into two classes according to two independent continua.

The First Continuum: The extremes go from “orientation to purposeful communication” to “orientation
to resource utilization”
The Second Continuum: The extremes go from “orientation to interpersonal relations” to “orientation
to natural phenomena”
People make career choices according to where they stand on these two continua.

@copyright Virtual University of Pakistan