Correction to "Vocational interests in the united states: Sex, age, ethnicity, and year effects" by Morris (2016).

Abstract

Reports an error in "Vocational interests in the United States: Sex, age, ethnicity, and year effects" by Michael L. Morris (Journal of Counseling Psychology, 2016[Oct], Vol 63[5], 604-615). In the article "Vocational Interests in the United States: Sex, Age, Ethnicity, and Year Effects," by Michael L. Morris (Journal of Counseling Psychology, 2016, Vol. 63, No. 5, pp. 604-615, https://doi .org/10.1037/cou0000164), errors related to the coding of two ethnicities, Black and Native American, resulted in some respondents being incorrectly recorded as the wrong ethnicity. A corrected analysis resulted in changes to the abstract, Participants section, Question 1, Question 5, Results section, and Discussion section and corrections to the values in Tables 3-6 in the main article and Tables 1, 2, and 13-22 in the online supplemental materials. The overall impact of these errors was minimal. The online version of this article has been corrected. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2016-36831-001.) Vocational interests predict educational and career choices, job performance, and career success (Rounds & Su, 2014). Although sex differences in vocational interests have long been observed (Thorndike, 1911), an appropriate overall measure has been lacking from the literature. Using a cross-sectional sample of United States residents aged 14 to 63 who completed the Strong Interest Inventory assessment between 2005 and 2014 (N = 1,283,110), I examined sex, age, ethnicity, and year effects on work related interest levels using both multivariate and univariate effect size estimates of individual dimensions (Holland's Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional). Men scored higher on Realistic (d = -1.14), Investigative (d = -.32), Enterprising (d = -.22), and Conventional (d = -.23), while women scored higher on Artistic (d = .19) and Social (d = .38), mostly replicating previous univariate findings. Multivariate, overall sex differences were very large (disattenuated Mahalanobis' D = 1.61; 27% overlap). Interest levels were slightly lower and overall sex differences larger in younger samples. Overall sex differences have narrowed slightly for 18-22 year-olds in more recent samples. Generally very small ethnicity effects included relatively higher Investigative and Enterprising scores for Asians, Indians, and Middle Easterners, lower Realistic scores for Blacks, higher Realistic, Artistic, and Social scores for Pacific Islanders, and lower Conventional scores for Whites. Using Prediger's (1982) model, women were more interested in people (d = 1.01) and ideas (d = .18), while men were more interested in things and data. These results, consistent with previous reviews showing large sex differences and small year effects, suggest that large sex differences in work related interests will continue to be observed for decades. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).