Thinking styles and personality types revisited

This study was designed to test the efficacy of the Short-Version Self-Dire cted Search (SVSDS) as well as to further investigate the relationships bet ween thinking styles and personality types. Seven hundred and eighty-nine s tudents (average 20 years) from two research-oriented universities from mai nland China responded to the Thinking Styles Inventory and the SVSDS. Two m ajor findings are: (1) the SVSDS is composed of six scales with good intern al consistency, each assessing one of Holland's six personality types; fact or analysis yielded a two-factor solution, with one factor being characteri zed by people who like to work with things and data, and the other being do minated by people who like to work with people and ideas, and (2) thinking styles and personality types are related in predictable ways. Implications of these findings for test users, including teachers and counselors, are di scussed. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.