Life history antecedents of sales, research, and general engineering interest

Abstract

Responses to a 170-item, multiple-choice life history questionnaire were analyzed against criteria of sales, research, and general engineering interest. A sample of 388 university freshmen in engineering was used for the sales and research portions of the analysis and 700 freshmen were used in appraising general engineering interest. The significant items were summarized by content category and used to develop scoring keys for each interest criterion. When these keys were cross-validated on completely independent samples, correlations of .57, .42, and .51 were obtained for sales, research, and general engineering, respectively. These findings provide empirical data regarding the development of engineering interest and suggest the potential feasibility of using scored life history data to predict the subsequent development of vocational interests. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)