Oregon Vocational Interest Scales (ORVIS)

The Oregon Vocational Interest Scales (ORVIS) is a career assessment tool that measures an individual’s interests in different occupations and work environments. It is often used by human resources professionals, career counselors, and other professionals working in the field of career development to help individuals explore career options that align with their interests and preferences.

Vocational interests are the type of professions you are interested in. They represent an important domain of individual differences, one that only partially overlaps with the ability or personality domains. Vocational fit determines which profession fits your personality. One way to find your vocational fit is to take the Oregon Vocational Interest Scales (ORVIS). It has the benefit of being both well designed and open access (it’s free whereas many other scales charge a fee).

Based on an individual’s responses to the ORVIS questions it is possible to generate a detailed report and provide suggestions for potential careers that align with their interests. In addition, it is also possible to provide valuable insights into an individual’s personality and how it may impact their workplace inter-personal relationships.

* We use the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) for our testing approach. It’s a collection of items managed by the Oregon Research Institute, freely available to the public. This tool helps us assess personality traits, and because it’s open-source, it promotes broad research and practical use.

Possible Application Fields of the ORVIS Test

The ORVIS test can be used in a variety of settings, including schools, universities, and employment centers, to help individuals make informed decisions about their careers. Some specific applications of the ORVIS test include:

1. Human resources.
   Use by human resources professionals to help with the selection and development of employees by identifying individuals with interests that align with the needs of the organization.
2. Career counseling.
   Use by career counselors to help individuals identify occupations that match their interests and preferences.
3. Vocational rehabilitation.
   Use in vocational rehabilitation settings to help migrants, individuals with disabilities or other challenges identify career options that may be suitable for them.
4. Education and training.
   Use by educators and trainers to help students and trainees explore career options and make informed decisions about their educational and training goals.
5. Self-assessment.
   Use by individuals to explore their own career interests and preferences and make informed decisions about their career path.

Development of the ORVIS

The ORVIS has eight dimensions. Its first five variables are similar in content to five of Holland’s “RIASEC” interest types. These are Enterprising, Conventional, Social, Artistic, and Investigative. The next two ORVIS scales, Producing and Adventuring, represent a division of Holland‘s Realistic interest type as operationalized in two Orientation scales from the Campbell Interest and Skill Survey (CISS). Finally, the ORVIS Erudition scale measures interests in scholarly activities. They were found to be differentiated from the remaining CISS Orientations.

In 1996, the Campbell Interest and Skill Survey (CISS) was administered to approximately 600 participants of Eugene-Springfield Community Sample (ESCS). Over the years, Goldberg has carried out a number of analyses of CISS scales. The most important of them were analyses of the seven CISS “Orientation” scales.

To develop public-domain measures of each of the CISS Orientations, 2,035 items from the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) were correlated with the seven scale scores. IPIP items were classified by the CISS scale with which they were most highly associated. IPIP items falling within each category were then selected rationally based on the extent of their correlations with the CISS scale, the apparent relevance of their content to the construct, and their lack of redundancy with other items already selected for that IPIP scale. Finally, the reliability of preliminary versions of the new scales were analyzed. Any items that served to attenuate scale reliability were omitted or replaced with other IPIP items that functioned more adequately.

All IPIP items are short phrases, beginning with a verb (e.g., Take risks, Talk softly). Those IPIP items that turned out to be most highly associated with the CISS scales typically included verbal phrases involving interest or preference (e.g., Like, Do not like, Enjoy, Do not enjoy, Prefer, Am [not] interested in). To discover whether the self-reported relative frequencies of individuals’ actual behavioral acts might turn out to be even better measures of interests, Goldberg used the 400 items in the Behavioral Report Inventory (BRI), which had been administered to the ESCS in 1997, to develop BRI scales associated with the seven CISS Orientation scales, using the exact same procedures used to develop the IPIP scales. Both the IPIP and BRI scales were developed in parallel in 2004, and compared as predictors of the CISS constructs. Information about both sets of scales is available from Goldberg.

In factor analyses of the original CISS Orientation scales, separately for skills and interests, as well as for the new IPIP and BRI versions of those seven constructs, it was always necessary to extract eight factors in order for the seven scales to each load most highly on a separate factor. If less than eight factors were extracted, the scales measuring the Producing and Analyzing Orientations always loaded most highly on the same factor. In the eight-factor analyses of the original CISS scales, the additional factor included CISS scales measuring interests and skills related to such occupations as Translator/Interpreter, Writer/Editor, Librarian, Liberal Arts Professor, and Musician and to such basic interests as Writing and International Activities. Seemingly, then, the addition of an eighth dimension (which Goldberg called “Erudition”) to the Holland six and the Campbell seven might be warranted.

Such an additional dimension is unlikely to be completely independent of the other constructs. Bit it might serve to capture important individual differences unavailable in previous vocational inventories. The Oregon Vocational Interest Scales (ORVIS) were developed as direct measures of these eight constructs. Items for each of the eight scales were generated to include both interests and activities conceptually associated with each dimension. The corresponding IPIP and BRI scales were taken as a basis. Moreover, the content of the CISS scales most highly associated with the additional eighth factor was also used. The brevity of the ORVIS instrument and the simplicity of its IPIP-based item format make it well suited for use.

Dimensions of the ORVIS

The ORVIS consists of a series of questions and tasks that assess an individual’s interests in different types of activities, work environments, and career fields. The questions are presented in the form of statements, and the individual is asked to indicate their level of agreement or disagreement with each statement.

The ORVIS measures the following eight dimensions of vocational interest: Leadership, Organization, Altruism, Creativity, Analysis, Producing, Adventuring, and Erudition. It suggests a range of careers that might fit the individual’s personality, not a specific job. That’s partially because the specific career choice will also depend on skills and education level. Many of the ORVIS categories are correlated with the Big 5 traits.

The job types on the RIASEC (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional) overlap with the ORVIS for all but the last ORVIS category. The Holland’s scales and the ORVIS were designed by different authors, so they differ in their categories and category labels. However, the two systems overlap more than they differ. They just use different names for the same types of careers. Both the ORVIS and the RIASEC model are widely used and considered to be reliable and valid tools for helping individuals explore career options and make informed decisions about their future.

Leadership (Extraversion – Enterprising)

Jobs involving leading and direction people.

Organization (Conscientiousness – Conventional)

Jobs involving organizing large amounts of data or materials.

Altruism (Agreeableness – Social)

Jobs involving helping others.

Creativity (Openness to experience – Artistic)

Jobs involving creating some sort of product.

Analysis (Openness to experience – Investigative)

Jobs involving analysis of information.

Adventure (None – Realistic)

Jobs involving risky and engaging experiences.

Production (None – Realistic)

Jobs involving building or producing things.

Erudition (Openness to experience – None)

Jobs involving gaining knowledge on many topics.

Advantages of Use of the ORVIS Test

The ORVIS test is considered to be a useful tool for career development because it can help individuals identify career options that align with their interests and preferences. This can be particularly helpful for people who are unsure of what career they want to pursue, or who are looking to make a career change. By understanding their interests and how they relate to different types of careers, individuals can make more informed decisions about their career paths and increase their chances of finding work that is fulfilling and satisfying. It can also be used as a tool to help HR specialists and career counselors match individuals with jobs or training programs that are suited to their interests and strengths.