A Study of the Reliability and Validity of Holland’s RIASEC of Vocational Personalities in Arabic

Abstract

There certain problems appear when using English language versions of robust psychometric instruments to identify when it comes to pinpointing Vocational Personalities, in a learning environment other than English native are usually written in English, intended to be used in a Western environment. When employed in a separate language environment, there are problems during translation, as well as cultural matters. An example of this is seen where there are linguistic inconsistencies during literal question or other item translation, meaning there are minor (or major) changes in the meaning for the translates output, which alters the validity and reliability of measurement of the estimations. A word for word translation of Holland’s RIASEC of Vocational Personalities was applied to 178 students at the King Abdulaziz University; this is a study that describes validity, internal reliability, factor structure and Correlation Analysis for Holland’s RIASEC in Arabic.