An exploratory investigation of occupational identity foreclosure and its relationship to Holland's theory of vocational choice

The Career Choice Survey (CCS) was developed for this study to classify subjects into one of four occupational identity statuses: achievement, moratorium, foreclosure and diffusion. It was developed with a community college sample and then applied to university students. In its final form, it consisted of twelve items and three distinct scales, as the moratorium and diffusion scales were confounded. The instrument did discriminate between foreclosures and achievers, however; and the intra-scale reliabilities for these two scales were .79 and .72, respectively.

The main study was conducted in the fall of 1981 and targetted two personality groups; predominantly investigative and predominantly realistic types. In all, 109 subjects engaged in medical and civil engineering training filled out the CCS and Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory (SCII). Subject responses on the CCS determined their occupational identity status. The General Occupational Theme scales of the SCII provided numerical scales for each of Holland's personality types and was the data source for Holland's variables; personality sub-types, personality consistency and differentiation, and person-job congruency. These provided nominal, ordinal and interval level data which was analyzed using the chisquare, t test, and Mann Whitney u statistical procedures.

The results showed no significance in the differences between occupational identity achievers and foreclosures in Holland's consistency and person-job congruency variables. There was also no significant relationship between the two personality types (investigative and realistic) and the two occupational identity statuses (achievement and foreclosure) which were the focus of this study; however, the foreclosures did have significantly higher conventional personality scores. In addition, the foreclosure personalities were significantly more differentiated than the achievement personalities, and the foreclosures chose their occupations at a significantly earlier age.

It can be presumed from this study that occupational identity foreclosures have highly predictable and stable careers, as Holland proposes that these traits are associated with a high degree of personality differentiation. This finding also suggests, however, that there may be a point at which personality differentiation becomes dysfunctional in that it may foster rigidity and inhibit growth. This further suggests that Holland's definition of healthy career development as a process leading to well-differentiated and consistent personalities may need to be refined to exclude those at the high end of the personality differentiation scale.