Oregon Avocational Interest Scales (ORAIS)
Complete the public-domain ORAIS survey and compare 33 activity-frequency scales with common-range means and answer-level review.{{ summaryTitle }}
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Leisure interests are often easier to recognize in what people repeatedly do than in what they say they might enjoy. The Oregon Avocational Interest Scales (ORAIS) approach this through activity frequency: 209 everyday statements ask about pursuits such as music, reading, exercise, travel, social life, collecting, household activity, gambling, and spiritual practice.
The response choices separate something never done from something done before but not in the past year, then distinguish one or two times, three to ten times, and more than ten times during the past year. That distinction matters. A long-standing interest that has recently become impractical can produce a different pattern from a new activity repeated often this year.
The published key organizes retained activities into 33 preliminary avocational-interest scales. These scales describe reported frequency within areas such as Computing, Creativity, Exercise, Music, Reading, Shopping, Sports, Travel, and Writing/Remembering. They do not measure skill, enjoyment, future potential, or occupational fit. Someone may be highly interested in an activity but unable to do it often because of time, cost, health, access, or caregiving demands.
ORAIS is most useful as a within-person profile. Comparing the scale means can show which activity areas have been more prominent in one response set. Population labels such as “high” or “low” require a relevant comparison sample, and none is applied here. The scales are preliminary, so the result should support reflection or research rather than diagnosis, selection, or a fixed identity label.
Some questions concern alcohol, gambling, relationships, religion, and other personal behavior. Complete the survey voluntarily and privately, and skip the exercise if recording those details is not appropriate for your situation.
How to Use This Tool:
Set aside enough time for all 209 activities. The profile is calculated only after every response is complete.
- Select Start ORAIS survey, then answer each activity with the official lifetime or past-year frequency choice that fits best.
- Use the progress bar and item navigator to find unanswered activities. You can move back to revise a response before finishing.
- Select Finish assessment when every activity has an answer. Read the common-scale means before comparing the raw sums, because the 33 scales contain different numbers of activities.
- Check Answer review when a leading scale is unexpected. It shows which activities were retained in that scale and which response values produced its sum.
Interpreting Results:
Each raw score adds the frequency values for the activities assigned to one scale. Because scale lengths range from four to eight activities, a longer scale can have a larger raw total even when its average response is no higher. Use the mean response, shown on the common 1 to 5 scale, to compare domains within the same profile.
- A larger mean indicates more frequent reported activity in that domain, not greater ability, worth, health, or satisfaction.
- A small difference between two means may reflect one or two answers rather than a meaningful separation between interests.
- Changes over time can reflect access and circumstances as well as changing interests. Retests are most comparable when the same response anchors and a similar life context are used.
There are no official cutoffs, percentiles, occupational matches, or types in this result. If the profile will inform counseling or research, review the underlying activities and use an appropriate comparison sample rather than assigning labels from the raw scores alone.
Technical Details:
The official survey has 209 numbered activities and five ordered frequency codes. Every retained item is positively keyed, so the selected code contributes directly to each scale that contains that activity. The scoring key contains 200 memberships across 199 unique activities: one activity belongs to two scales, while ten survey activities are not retained in any published scale.
Formula Core:
For scale k, the raw score is the sum of its retained response codes. Dividing by the number of retained activities puts every scale on the same 1 to 5 response range.
| Code | Frequency meaning |
|---|---|
| 1 | Never in my life |
| 2 | Not in the past year |
| 3 | One or two times in the past year |
| 4 | Three to ten times in the past year |
| 5 | More than ten times in the past year |
A six-activity scale with responses 5, 4, 4, 3, 2, and 2 has a raw sum of 20 and a mean of 3.33. A four-activity scale with a raw sum of 16 has a mean of 4.00, so it represents the more frequent activity pattern even though its raw total is smaller.
Scores are complete-only integer sums. The displayed mean is derived from the unrounded sum and shown to two decimal places; no weighting, reverse scoring, imputation, percentile conversion, or threshold rule is applied.
Limitations and Privacy:
Activity frequency is affected by opportunity, resources, disability, location, season, household roles, and recent life changes. ORAIS therefore cannot establish what someone would prefer under different circumstances, how capable they are, or which occupation they should pursue.
The current session is kept in browser memory. If you choose to copy a completed result link, all 209 raw responses are placed in an encoded URL fragment. That fragment is not encrypted or access-controlled, so anyone who receives the link can recover the personal response pattern.
Starting a new session clears the in-memory responses and removes the shared fragment. Keep copied links and downloaded records private, especially when answers include alcohol, gambling, religious, or relationship activity.
References:
- 33 Preliminary Oregon Avocational Interest Scales Survey, International Personality Item Pool.
- ORAIS Scoring Key, International Personality Item Pool.
- Interpreting Individual IPIP Scale Scores, International Personality Item Pool.
- Obtaining Permission, International Personality Item Pool.