A Comparison of Two Interest Inventories for Use with Enlisted Personnel.

Improved classification and assignment of enlisted personnel is intended to bring about improved retention and job performance. The present study focused on two instruments of potential usefulness in enlisted classification, the Navy Vocational Interest Inventory (NVII) and the Strong Vocational Interest Blank (SVIB). Previous findings have shown that the empirically derived Navy occupational keys and the more general NVII area scales effectively measured the vocational interest of Navy enlisted men. The primary consideration of this report is to compare the NVII and the SVIB in terms of which inventory does the better job of measuring the interest patterns of enlisted men. As part of an earlier study, the NVII was administered to recruits at seven different Class 'A' schools. These schools were Hospital Corpsman, Electronics Technician, Yeoman, Storekeeper, Engineman, Machinist's Mate, and Submarine. Recently the SVIB was administered to another sample of recruits, some of whom subsequently attended one of the above schools. The homogeneous scales of the NVII and SVIB were compared to determine which inventory was most effective in differentiating the interests of enlisted men. The degree of discrimination between groups on each set of homogeneous scales was measured by the 'percentage of overlap' statistic. (Author)