Expressed and inventoried interests revisited: Perspicacity in the person.

Studied the relative validities of expressed choice vs inventoried interests for predicting college major and career choice outcomes. A total of 795 male National Merit Scholars in 16 college major categories and 609 male Scholars in 10 career fields provided data before college and 3 yrs later. The total percentage of accurate expressed choice predictions was over 50% for both outcomes, while the SVIB Men's Form (SVIB-M) was accurate for 30.8% of all college major predictions and 40.2% of all career field forecasts. When expressed choice and the SVIB agreed in prediction of outcome, the hit rate rose to over 70%. However, when expressed choice and SVIB predictions were not the same for a given person, expressed choice was found to be 2–3 times more accurate than the SVIB-M. These results highlight the importance of expressed interests in predicting vocational behavior and suggest ways in which expressed and inventoried interests might best be used in counseling. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)