We've come full circle: The universality of People-Things and Data-Ideas as core dimensions of vocational interests

Abstract

Vocational interest research relies on interest taxonomies that partition the construct space of activity preferences into a small number of broad interest domains. To this day, the most widely used classification system is Holland's (1997) RIASEC taxonomy, which distinguishes between six overarching interest domains. A central feature of this model is that the six domains are connected via a circular similarity structure, the circumplex, which is often described with the help of two orthogonal core dimensions: People-Things and Data-Ideas. In recent years, alternative interest taxonomies have been proposed, which suggest different partitionings of the construct space that are said to better reflect today's world of work. Using the example of one such alternative, namely, the recently introduced SETPOINT model (Su et al., 2019), the current article argues that such taxonomies still strongly reflect the underlying core dimensions that define the interest circumplex. Using a mixed online sample from Germany (N = 560), it is shown that 1) the main and subdomains of the SETPOINT model reflect a circular similarity structure, 2) this circular similarity structure is conceptually identical to the ones identified in previous research, and 3) the discriminatory power of the SETPOINT scales for occupational group membership can largely be traced back to the core dimensions of the interest circumplex.