Welcome to the Party! An Expression of Vocational Preference

Abstract

Holland’s Self-Directed Search (SDS) is often used to identify occupational interests by assessing an individual’s skills and abilities, interests, and affinity. The assumption that individuals possess the greatest occupational skills in areas that they enjoy may be invalid when experiences are determined more by chance or circumstance than by choice. The exercise in this paper classifies by interest and affinity, and is, therefore, useful to confirm SDS scores for some students, and to provide a more legitimate measure of those preferences for others.