Development And Application Of Vocational Interest Card Sort

With the increase of competition in employment, career life planning has attracted more and more attention. Vocational interest is the important basis of career life planning, which can affect vocational orientation and choice, promote vocational exploration and creativity, and increase vocational adaptation and, stability. It is the high school stage when vocational interest is gradually formative and ripe. As a special group, secondary school students will enter society earlier and make a choice among majors. In order to make such vocational choice as proper, realistic and right, they should and must know the work world well and find out their own interest and hobby under appropriate instruction. However, the current interest assessments are mostly test on paper-pen. This kind of test cannot meet everyone's needs, and also cannot effectively transfer the result into the testee's comprehension. So, the paper is to develop an easy, unique, constructive and interactive Vocational Interest Card Sort (VICS), and to discuss its application in school career counseling.The paper includes two studies. The first study established Vocational Interest Card Sort on the basis of Holland theory through literature search, questionnaire survey, experts' discussion and small group test. A complete VICS composed of three categories and 80 cards, 3 sort cards, 7 explanation cards and 70 vocation cards (including 60 common vocation cards and 10 blank vocation cards). 607 secondary school students (male 231, female 367) were investigated. The results are as following: (1) Item analysis found no ceiling effect and floor effect. Every vocation card had most significant relation with its sort and the total VICS. Vocation cards had stability in time and people. (2) Reliability analysis showed that the full VICS Cronbach's a coefficient was .94, split-half correlation coefficient was .93 and retest reliability was .52. The six sorts cronbach's coefficient ranged from .61 to .89, split-half correlation coefficient ranged from .69 to .84, and retest reliability from .39 to .64. (3) Validity analysis showed that VICS was fitted to Holland's hexagonal model. The correlation coefficient between VICS and satisfaction is 4.66, p<.05. The correlation coefficient between VICS and satisfaction is 3.98,p<05.The second study invited 16 secondary school students and 1 consultant in local school to take part in career counseling. The video of the process of counseling, feedback sheets and interviews were used as the proof and supplements of the research results. All the participants had positive opinion on VICS, and the teacher affirmed the practical value of VICS in school counseling.As a whole, Vocational Interest Card Sort had good reliability and validity, which is suited for secondary school students in China. VICS is not only an effective interest assessment, but also a helpful tool in school career counseling. It is appropriate and meaningful to promote VICS in school.