Interest Changes and the Classification of Occupations

Abstract

The COPSystem Interest Inventory was administered during two successive school years to examine the changes occurring in major areas of interest. Based on the previous work of Roe and others (1966) it was hypothesized that when classified according to this system, changes would not be random and would be predictably associated with the interest Group to which they belonged. An analysis of the profiles of 1,243 secondary school students showed that 45 percent had the same Group cluster as their peak interest on the successive school years, demonstrating the stability of the COPSystem interest classification, and that among those for whom major area of interest changed, the likelihood of their falling in any other Group varies inversely with the distance of that Group from the original one.