THE 5-FACTOR MODEL OF PERSONALITY AND HOLLANDS RIASEC INTEREST TYPES

The relationships between the Big Five and Holland's RIASEC vocational interest model are investigated in a large sample of last-year studen ts (N = 934) enrolled in different educational majors. In addition, th e relationships between traits and Holland's concepts of congruency, c onsistency and differentiation are investigated, as well as the relati ons between traits and response sets to interest inventories. The five factors are assessed with a Dutch/Flemish adaptation of the NEO-PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and the RIASEC types are assessed with the Self -Directed Search (Holland, 1977, 1979). The correspondence between bot h models is investigated using correlational and exploratory factor an alysis. The results show that all Big Five domain factors are signific antly related to at least one or more RIASEC types, but not all RIASEC scales are correlated with the Big Five. Especially the Realistic sca le and to a lesser extent the Investigative scale are not represented in the Big Five. The findings of this study replicate and extend forme r findings by Costa, McCrae and Holland (1984) and Gottfredson, Jones and Holland (1993). The results suggest that there is considerable ove rlap between both models, but that they also account for unique varian ce. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.