Validity of the Strong Interest Inventory: Gender and Personal Styles

The gender validity of the Strong Interest Inventory's Personal Style Scales (Work Style, Learning Environment, Leadership Style, and Risk Taking/Adventure) was examined through a study of 458 female and 282 male college students at Iowa State University. The students completed the Personal Style Scales and the Adjective Check List (ACL), which is a standardized 300-adjective list used for research and personality assessment purposes. The adjectives of the ACL were used as criterion variables to validate each of the Personal Style Scales. The students' responses were subjected to correlational and regression analyses. Significant gender differences were discovered on the mean scores on three scales: Work Style, Leadership Style, and Risk Taking/Adventure. Gender differences in frequency of selection of many of the adjectives on the ACL were also discovered. In general, women endorsed more adjectives than men did. Many adjectives proved substantially correlated in the same direction for both genders with a given Personal Style Scale, thus indicating similar relationships for both genders. The study also revealed adjectives for each of the four scales that were strong predictors for one gender and not the other, as well as adjectives that exhibited opposite relationships for males and females. (MN)