Chances and psychometric limits of questionnaires for field-specific interest: an example from mechanical engineering

Abstract

While interest questionnaires based on Holland's RIASEC-model face the challenge of finding an optimal congruence measure to match a person’s interests with the environment, tailor-made specific interest questionnaires avoid this problem in a pragmatic way: Instead of resulting in a general interest profile, only the interests needed in the particular field are assessed. The particular field can then be assessed in more detail, while other areas and therefore a typological interest are not looked for. The article presents construction, implementation and psychometric analyses (i.e. according to the Rasch model) of a field-specific interest questionnaire for mechanical engineering, focussing on the struggle of how to create a uni-dimensional and therefore fair measurement.