Do types influence types? Examining the relationship between stuedents' and parents' Holland codes

College Student Journal, June, 2003 by Mark J. Miller, Don Wells, Thomas P. Springer, Ernest Jr. Cowger

This study examined the relationship between students' and their parents' three-letter Holland codes. Results revealed a moderate level of congruence between the two codes. Implications of the results are discussed.

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The role of parents as primary determinants of children's career development has been recognized both theoretically (i. e., Gottfredson, 1981; Roe, 1956) and in research on careers (Birk & Blimline, 1984; Otto & Call, 1985). Blustein (1994) has synthesized much of the relevant literature in this area and found that the data suggests the extremely important role of the family as a mediator of children's ego identity and in creating the psychological environment within which their career development unfolds. For example, Helwig (1984) examined the interrelationships of Holland types in three generations of one family (15 members of the immediate family) and found evidence of similarity of Holland types between parents and children.

This study was done to broaden the research on the relationship between parental personality types and those of their children by using Holland's (1997) theoretical model. Indeed, Holland's heuristic theory exhorts the reader to investigate interpersonal relationships/interactions using his theory (Bruch, 1978). Clearly, psychologists have been studying the similarity of children's and parents' personalities for decades (cf. Erikson, 1980; Piaget & Inhelder, 1969). Relatively less coverage of this relationship, however, has occurred in the vocational/career counseling literature. Thus, if parents have significant influence over children's career choices, then one might expect a relatively high congruence between their respective personalities.

METHOD

Participants

The sample consisted of 58 graduate students (39 women, 19 men). Students volunteered from an evening section of a graduate counseling course taught at a medium-sized southern university as one of a number of ways to earn additional points. The sample was 68% Caucasian, 27% African-American, and 5% other; they ranged in age from 61 to 21 yr., having a mean of 29.08 yr. and a standard deviation of 5.50.

Measures

Parents' three-letter code.--Students were asked to respond to the following statement: "Write down the occupation of your parents-both your father and your mother. If either parent is currently unemployed or retired, write down their last occupation." The occupation title was then located in the Directory of Holland Occupational Codes (Gottfredson & Holland, 1996) and assigned its corresponding three-letter code. If an exact occupational title could not be located, efforts were made to identify a similar title.

Students' three-letter code.--Students' code was measured by the Self-Directed Search (SDS; Holland, 1994). The SDS is a self-administered, self-interpreted instrument designed to provide career guidance for students and adults. After completing the SDS, the client sums all positive responses and arrives at a three-letter code on the summary page. Holland (1985) reported reliability estimates ranging from .70 to .89 as well as evidence of concurrent validity. Several hundred studies have been conducted on the SDS with generally favorable results (Osipow, 1993).

Scoring of measures.--The three-letter code is a term used within Holland's (1997) theory of careers to explain and describe a wide variety of career related behaviors. Holland states that an individual's personality (i. e., interests, values, abilities, fantasies) can be classified by means of a three-letter code, with each letter representing one of six personality types (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional). For example, a three-letter code of SAE would describe someone who is primarily social (i. e., wishes to help others), followed by Artistic (i. e., enjoys self-expression), and Enterprising (i. e., uses social interaction to sell ideas or products). A thorough description of each type is given by Holland (1997.)

According to Holland (1997), congruence refers to the degree of similarity between two separate three-letter codes (e. g., parents' and their children's codes, for purpose of this study). The difficulty of quantifying the similarity between two Holland codes is at the heart of the issue of measuring congruence (Osipow, 1987). Camp and Chartrand (1992) compared 13 different measures that had been developed to operationalize Holland's congruence construct. The index measure chosen for this study was the Brown & Gore (1994) "C" (for congruency) index. This "C" index was selected because it (1) is consistent with Holland's theory, (2) is more comprehensive than other indices, such as the Zener and Schnvelle (1976) index, (3) is recommended by Holland (1997) himself, (4) has a normal simulated distribution, (5) is easy to calculate, and (6) is sensitive to code orders.

The Brown & Gore (1994) index (C) is an extension of Holland's first hexagonal distance measure to a three-letter code. The formula for C if C = 3(x) 2(x) (x), where x is a score of 3, 2, 1, or 0 assigned to each comparison according to the hexagonal distance between the letters (3 = identical person and environment letters, 2 = adjacent hexagonal letters, 1 = alternate hexagonal letters, 0 = opposite hexagonal letters).