Strong Interest Inventory®: What's the Work Style Scale?

Basically, this scale shows whether people prefer to work with things, data, or ideas versus those who prefer to work with people. The interesting part is this scale correlates to the General Occupational Themes and the Basic Interest Scales.

It's more common for those who score highest on the Realistic and Investigative themes to also score towards the Ideas/Data/Things pole of the Work Styles scale. Likewise, those who score high on the Enterprising and Social scales generally tend towards the People pole.

There are gender differences on this pole. You can see this on page 6 of the Snapshot. Females tend more towards the People pole than males. The box represents the middle 50% of scores, while the bar shows the middle 80%.

In college, those who score towards the Ideas/Data/Things pole tend to study physical sciences, machine trades, engineering, computer and information sciences, and math. Those who prefer the People pole tend to study subjects such as education, journalism, business, and social sciences.

As far as occupations go, the top scorers for Work with People pole are Child Care Provider (female), Home Economics Teacher (female), Community Services Organization Director, High School Counselor, and Secretary (female). The highest scorers on the Works with Ideas/Data/Things pole are Physicist, Chemist, Mathematician, Computer Programmer/Systems Analyst, Biologist, and Geologist.

Once again, be careful about choosing an occupation based on your score on this scale. If you scored towards the People pole, you can still be a chemist, for example. If you choose that field, you might want to look for ways to become more involved with others. You might become a manager, for instance.