Validity of the 1994 strong interest inventory with racial and ethnic groups in the United States

During the revision of the 1994 Strong Interest Inventory (SII; L. W. Harmo n, J. C. Hansen, F. H. Borgen & A. L. Hammer, 1994), information was obtain ed about the race-ethnicity and careers of over 55,000 employed adults in 5 0 different occupations. The national norm group, the general reference sam ple, contains 18,789 individuals who identified their race-ethnicity in the following manner: 378 African Americans; 363 Asian Americans; 17,365 Cauca sian Americans; 349 Hispanic Americans/Latinos (Latinas); and 77 Native Ame ricans/American Indians. Concurrent validity across racial-ethnic groups wa s examined by typing their 50 occupations into the appropriate J. L. Hollan d (1997) job family. Then the General Occupational Themes, the SII scales c orresponding to Holland's (1997) 6 vocational personality types, were exami ned for their ability to predict Holland (1997) job family in similar ways for the different racial-ethnic groups. Results generally showed comparable validity and interpretive counseling implications in using the SII with th ese racial-ethnic groups. Some interesting trends and important limitations were also noted.