Psychometric Properties of the Career Clusters Interest Survey

The current study examined the psychometric support of the Career Clusters Interest Survey (CCIS) that provides subscales scores for the 16 Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) career clusters in a sample of 203 college students. Reliability of the subscales was supported with respect to internal consistency and 2-week stability estimates. A principal components analysis (PCA) of the subscale scores revealed that the CCIS yielded only two factors, a general one and one capturing People/Things. Correlation of these components with interest scores from the Personal Globe Inventory (PGI) revealed that the CCIS scales captured only the People/ Things dimension while not covering the Data/Ideas dimension or prestige. So, the instrument represents a very restricted range of interests. In addition, the agreement of the cluster scores from the CCIS with those provided by the PGI was very low. So, reliability support was provided but questions about the validity of the CCIS with respect to its coverage of the interest domain were yielded. Using the CCIS to guide students could result in a very restricted examination of occupations.