The interest structure of Native American college students

This study investigated the fit of Holland's vocational interest structure for samples of female and male Native American college students. The spatia l arrangement of Native American interest types was expected to (a) be orde red in a R-I-A-S-E-C circular order, (b) approximate a hexagon, and (c) occ upy a two-dimensional space. Strong Interest Inventory General Occupational Theme scores for 103 female and 73 male Native American college students f irst were submitted to a multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis. The MDS a nalysis allowed a visual test of the circular order and hexagonal hypothese s and a statistical test of the two-dimensional hypothesis. A randomized te st of hypothesized order also was used to statistically test the circular o rder hypothesis. All of the statistical tests and visual analyses supported the circular order and two-dimensional hypothesis. The female interest dat a, however, were ml,re consistent with Holland's proposed hexagonal interes t structure than were the male interest data.