Strong Interest Inventory®: In-Depth Look at Investigative Types

This issue we'll look more closely at Investigative types.  First, let's consider jobs.  As discussed in previous newsletters, Investigative types prefer to work with similar people involved in understanding and controlling physical, biological, and cultural phenomena.  They prefer to avoid repetitive, social, and persuasive activities. They are least likely to want to engage in Enterprising kinds of activities. 

Investigative types tend to value scholarly or scientific achievement or activities.  They tend to want independence, and admire personal traits such as being logical, ambitious, and intellectual.  Other less important values include being cheerful, family security, or having true friendships.  They tend to have liberal goals and values, be open to new ideas and experiences, have a wide range of interests, and an open belief system.

The self-image of Investigative types includes seeing themselves as having scientific or research abilities in addition to mathematical skills.  They often believe they are curious, scholarly, analytical, and having broad interests.  They enjoy thinking about how to solve problems.  They often believe that attempting to persuade others to take particular course of action would be frustrating.  Investigative types tend to have moderate to high self-esteem.

When solving problems, Investigative types rely on thinking, data gathering, careful analysis, objective data, and similar scholarly approaches.  They tend to ignore personal feelings or social factors.  They often enjoy working on challenging problems.

Some adjectives used to describe this type include introspective, rational, precise, curious, critical, analytical, pessimistic, independent, intellectual, radical, complex, cautious, and unassuming.

As before, it's common for people to be a combination of more than one type.  No description will match everyone.  There are likely to be aspects of the above Investigative types will disagree with.  Each person has to decide for him- or herself which parts are accurate.