O*NET Interest Profiler-60 (IP-SF) Assessment
Rate 60 O*NET work activities to build a Holland RIASEC code, compare theme scores, and review task evidence for career exploration.Your holland code
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Result details
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RIASEC interest ladder
Holland hexagon
What stands out
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Lower-scored complements
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Balance and spread
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How to use this profile
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What not to overread
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Suggested next steps
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| Theme | Score | Avg appeal | Rank | Read it as | Copy |
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Most liked activities
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Lower-interest activities
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Answer review
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Career fit is easier to discuss when job titles are translated into repeated work activities. A title such as analyst, technician, teacher, designer, supervisor, or coordinator can hide very different daily routines. Vocational interest profiling asks a narrower question: which kinds of tasks feel worth doing often enough to shape a course choice, job search, internship, training plan, or career conversation?
The O*NET Interest Profiler Short Form belongs to the Holland RIASEC family of career-interest assessments. RIASEC sorts work interests into Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional themes. The themes are not personality diagnoses or skill ratings. They describe attraction to activity patterns, such as building and repairing, analyzing evidence, creating, helping, persuading, or organizing records and procedures.
- Realistic
- Hands-on work with tools, machines, equipment, materials, plants, animals, or physical systems.
- Investigative
- Research, diagnosis, analysis, experiments, problem solving, and explaining why something happens.
- Artistic
- Creative expression, design, writing, performance, media, and open-ended idea work.
- Social
- Teaching, helping, counseling, coaching, caring, and direct service to people.
- Enterprising
- Leading, selling, negotiating, persuading, managing, and moving people or projects forward.
- Conventional
- Organizing information, following procedures, maintaining records, checking details, and keeping systems orderly.
A Holland code is usually written as the top three RIASEC letters. The code is useful because it gives the first search direction, but the letters only become meaningful when they are checked against real tasks. Two people can share an ISA code and still want different work if one person liked laboratory diagnosis while the other liked weather prediction and data analysis.
The order of the letters also matters. Adjacent letters on the Holland hexagon, such as Realistic and Investigative, often point to work settings that combine more naturally. Opposite letters, such as Realistic and Social or Artistic and Conventional, can still be a real preference pattern, but they need a closer look at the daily balance of tasks.
An interest profile is strongest as a conversation starter. It can help a student choose courses to investigate, a job seeker compare occupation descriptions, or an adviser frame options. It should not be used by itself for hiring, admission, diagnosis, or a life-changing decision without other evidence such as work samples, course performance, labor-market information, and guidance from a qualified adviser.
How to Use This Tool:
Answer every activity as an interest judgment first, then use the completed report to connect the letters back to the tasks that created them.
- Select Start Assessment. For each activity, choose one option from Strongly Dislike, Dislike, Unsure, Like, or Strongly Like.
- Rate the activity itself. Avoid raising or lowering an answer because of pay, social status, current skill, training cost, or whether the job title sounds familiar.
- Use the progress bar and activity navigator to monitor the 60 responses. The result appears only after the progress label reaches 60/60 answered.
- Read the summary code, Top theme, Lowest theme, Spread, Profile balance, and Hexagon relation before jumping to occupation searches.
- Compare the RIASEC interest ladder with the Holland hexagon. The ladder shows score order, while the hexagon shows whether the strongest pair is adjacent, a bridge pair, or opposite.
- Check Theme readout, Most liked activities, and Lower-interest activities. These sections show whether the code reflects tasks you actually want more of or tasks you would rather avoid.
- If the report looks surprising, use Answer review or the activity navigator to fix a mistaken response before copying a result link or exporting the answer record.
Interpreting Results:
The three-letter Holland code is the headline, but the score spread and activity evidence decide how much confidence to place in it. A tight score cluster supports broad exploration. A large gap between the highest and lowest theme supports a narrower search, provided the top activities still match the kind of work you want to repeat.
| Output cue | How to read it | What to verify |
|---|---|---|
| Top two or three scores are close | Do not force a single dominant theme too early. | Keep the nearby letters in the first occupation or course search. |
| Hexagon relation is adjacent | The strongest themes often combine in one work setting. | Look for role descriptions where both activities appear every week. |
| Hexagon relation is opposite | The preference may be real, but the role has to balance unlike work demands. | Read task lists closely instead of trusting a title or summary alone. |
| Profile balance is focused | The strongest theme is well separated from the weakest theme. | Check that low-rated activities are not central to the shortlist option. |
| Avg appeal is low | The 60 activities may have felt broadly neutral or unappealing. | Review whether answers reflected the task itself or assumptions about setting, prestige, or training. |
A high Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, or Conventional score does not prove skill. A low score does not rule out a career. The safer check is proportional: how much of the real week is built around the activities that raised or lowered the score?
Use repeated evidence before treating a code as stable. Interests can change after a class, project, internship, volunteer role, health change, new workplace, or better information about what a job actually involves.
Technical Details:
The O*NET Interest Profiler Short Form uses 10 work activities for each RIASEC theme, for 60 activities total. The short form was developed from the longer Interest Profiler to keep broad coverage of the six Holland themes while making the assessment practical for counseling, workshops, career classes, and individual exploration.
The visible response scale runs from 1 to 5, but the official contribution used for scoring is 0 to 4. That shift makes Strongly Dislike contribute 0 points and Strongly Like contribute 4 points. Each theme score is the sum of 10 contributions, so every RIASEC theme ranges from 0 to 40.
Formula Core
The core arithmetic is a sum of shifted item ratings for each RIASEC theme.
For one theme, visible ratings of 5, 4, 5, 3, 4, 4, 5, 4, 3, and 4 become official contributions of 4, 3, 4, 2, 3, 3, 4, 3, 2, and 3. The theme score is 31/40. The displayed average appeal for that theme is the mean of the original 1 to 5 ratings, so the same ratings produce 4.1/5.
Score Construction
| Element | Rule | Range | Use in the report |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visible response | Strongly Dislike through Strongly Like | 1 to 5 | Records stated interest in one work activity. |
| Official score | Visible response minus 1 | 0 to 4 | Shows how much one activity contributes to its theme. |
| Theme score | Sum of 10 official scores for one theme | 0 to 40 | Ranks the six RIASEC themes. |
| Holland code | Top three theme letters ordered by score | 3 letters | Summarizes the strongest interest pattern. |
| Browse code | Top two letters, or top three when the second and third scores differ by 3 points or less | 2 or 3 letters | Keeps a close third theme visible during first searches. |
When scores tie, the display still needs an order. Tied themes are ordered by the fixed RIASEC sequence: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional. Treat exact ties and near-ties as shared signals rather than as meaningful rank differences.
Local Reading Rules
| Reading cue | Boundary | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Average appeal | Very high at 4.25+, higher at 3.50 to 4.24, mixed at 2.75 to 3.49, lower at 2.00 to 2.74, very low below 2.00 | Labels the mean visible rating for a theme or for the full 60-item set. |
| Profile balance | Balanced when spread is less than 8, defined from 8 to 15, focused at 16 or more | Compares the highest theme score with the lowest theme score. |
| Hexagon relation | Adjacent is 1 step, bridge is 2 steps, opposite is 3 steps on the RIASEC order | Shows whether the leading pair is usually easier or harder to combine in one role. |
| Activity evidence | Highest-rated and lowest-rated activities are sorted from completed responses | Connects the abstract letters back to concrete tasks. |
The calculation is deterministic once all 60 responses are complete. The psychology behind the instrument is broader than the local thresholds: O*NET source documents describe the short form's item selection, reliability, validity, and circular RIASEC structure, while the report here focuses on scoring the completed response pattern and helping the user read it carefully.
Limitations:
Career-interest results can narrow exploration, but they cannot decide a career by themselves. They leave out opportunity, health needs, income constraints, family responsibilities, local labor markets, credentials, values, work culture, and how a person performs after training.
- Use the profile for exploration and discussion, not for hiring, admission, diagnosis, or aptitude claims.
- Review near-ties manually because an ordered three-letter code can make close scores look more decisive than they are.
- Scoring runs in the browser, but copied result links and exported answer records can reveal personal interest responses. Share them only with people who should see that information.
Worked Examples:
Analytical and practical interests stay close
A completed response set gives Investigative 34/40, Realistic 31/40, and Conventional 29/40. The Holland code is IRC, and the browse code keeps all three letters because Realistic and Conventional differ by only 2 points. Hexagon relation reads as an adjacent pair for the leading I and R themes, so technical, laboratory, field, repair, or diagnostic roles are worth comparing.
Focused social pattern with a paperwork warning
Social 36/40 and Conventional 18/40 create an 18-point spread, so Profile balance reads as Focused. If Lower-interest activities includes inventory, recordkeeping, and repeated forms, a helping role may still fit, but jobs with heavy documentation should be checked before making a shortlist.
The report is still hidden
If the progress label shows 58/60 answered, the Holland code, RIASEC interest ladder, Holland hexagon, and Answer review are not ready. Use the activity navigator to find the two open items, choose responses, and then review the completed summary before exporting or sharing.
FAQ:
Is this an aptitude test?
No. The report reflects interest in work activities. It does not measure skill, credentials, readiness, work quality, or whether an employer should select someone.
Why does the browse code sometimes use three letters?
The browse code keeps the third letter when the second and third theme scores differ by 3 points or less. That prevents a close third interest from disappearing during the first search.
What should I do with tied theme scores?
Treat ties as useful uncertainty. The display still orders the letters, but tied themes should all be compared against occupation tasks, course projects, and work samples.
Why is there no result after I started answering?
The report appears only after all 60 activities have a response. Check the progress label and use the activity navigator to find any unanswered item.
Are my responses private?
Scoring happens in the browser, but a result link can include the answer pattern, and exported files can include every response. Avoid sharing those outputs where the response details should stay private.
Glossary:
- RIASEC
- The six Holland interest themes: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional.
- Holland code
- The top three RIASEC letters ordered by theme score.
- Official score
- The 0 to 4 contribution assigned to one activity after the visible 1 to 5 response is shifted down by 1.
- Theme score
- The sum of 10 official scores for one RIASEC theme, ranging from 0 to 40.
- Browse code
- The two- or three-letter code used as the first search guide for occupations, programs, or work settings.
- Hexagon relation
- The distance between the top two themes on the RIASEC hexagon.
- Profile balance
- The spread between the highest and lowest RIASEC theme scores.
References:
- O*NET® Interest Profiler Manual, O*NET Resource Center, March 2021.
- O*NET® Interest Profiler Short Form Paper-and-Pencil Version: Evaluation of Self-Scoring and Psychometric Characteristics, O*NET Resource Center, September 2018.
- O*NET® Interest Profiler Short Form Psychometric Characteristics: Summary, National Center for O*NET Development, 2010.