These findings suggest that the cultures studied have present work models whereby crafts, scientific, artistic, social, business enterprise, and business detail interests can develop. If these six interest factors are valid within these cultures, it also suggests that vocational interests can be validly measured through Holland based scales and the Holland theory of vocational development can be a relevant crosscultural theoretical orientation for career planning. The research supports the construct validity of the Career Decision-Making System.
This paper reports on the cross-cultural applicability of the Holland theory of vocational development and the Career Decision-Making System. Holland's theory of vocational choice, one of America's most popular theories, suggests that people tend to choose occupational environments, that is, jobs consistent with their personality types -Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional -and that most people can be categorized by a single type or a combination of types. Corresponding to these six personality types are six occupational environments with the same names -Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. According to the theory, each personality type will seek out its corresponding occupational environment. Thus, an Enterprising personality will seek out an Enterprising occupational setting, while a Social-Artistic type will seek out a Social-Artistic environment. Furthermore, the theory states that job performance, satisfaction, and stability are positively related to the degree of congruence between personality type and occupational environment.
Central to Holland's theory is the research that shows the relationship among the six Holland occupational types can be ordered according to a hexagon in which distances between the types are inversely proportional to the size of the zero-order correlations between them. The hexagon is presented as follows: