• Chad H Van Iddekinge, Dan J Putka, and John P Campbell.
• College of Business, Florida State University, 821 Academic Way, P.O. Box 3061110, Tallahassee, FL 32306-1110, USA. cvanidde@fsu.edu
• J Appl Psychol. 2011 Jan 1; 96 (1): 13-33.

AbstractAlthough vocational interests have a long history in vocational psychology, they have received extremely limited attention within the recent personnel selection literature. We reconsider some widely held beliefs concerning the (low) validity of interests for predicting criteria important to selection researchers, and we review theory and empirical evidence that challenge such beliefs. We then describe the development and validation of an interests-based selection measure. Results of a large validation study (N = 418) reveal that interests predicted a diverse set of criteria—including measures of job knowledge, job performance, and continuance intentions—with corrected, cross-validated Rs that ranged from .25 to .46 across the criteria (mean R = .31). Interests also provided incremental validity beyond measures of general cognitive aptitude and facets of the Big Five personality dimensions in relation to each criterion. Furthermore, with a couple exceptions, the interest scales were associated with small to medium subgroup differences, which in most cases favored women and racial minorities. Taken as a whole, these results appear to call into question the prevailing thought that vocational interests have limited usefulness for selection.

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