At a glance
| Model | Holland's RIASEC interest types (Holland, 1997) |
|---|---|
| Questions | 69 scored questions: activities you tick, work-style sliders, scenarios where you pick one side, skills you rate and pictures you tick. Median time to complete: 6.4 minutes |
| Scoring | Deterministic, with fixed rules: the same answers always give the same scores. No AI is involved in scoring. |
| Comparison sample | 3,987 complete sittings of the current form (table generated 20 September 2026); self-selected online test-takers, all languages pooled |
| Reliability (Cronbach's α per interest) | R 0.65 · I 0.72 · A 0.76 · S 0.74 · E 0.68 · C 0.65; 3 of 6 below 0.70 (Realistic, Enterprising and Conventional) |
| Not done | Test–retest, comparison with another interest inventory, link to job outcomes |
What it measures — and what the model is
The test measures your interest in the six work-interest types of Holland's model: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising and Conventional. The model has a large research literature; a quantitative summary of it found that interests relate to job performance and to persistence in a job or a course of study (Nye, Su, Rounds & Drasgow, 2012).
That literature is about the model. It is not a validation of these 69 questions.
The questions
This test is not the Self-Directed Search or the O*NET Interest Profiler, so figures published for those inventories do not apply to it.
The same questions run here and in the full version on my-path.net. The two are separate copies; an automated test pins every question to the same interest type on both, and both to the same scoring formula. Because the format is mixed, an interest's score combines different kinds of answer.
How your result is computed
Each answer adds points to one interest type (a work-style slider adds to the side you lean towards). Your points for each type are divided by the most that type can score on these questions (its ceiling), and your strongest interest is then scaled to 100 for the bars. Your Holland code is your top three letters, and careers are matched by comparing your top types with the RIASEC code of each career. The scoring runs in your browser.
The bars rank your interests against each other; they do not say how strong an interest is compared with other people, because everyone's strongest interest is 100. The full version on my-path.net also shows a percentile for each interest, computed from the ceiling share, which does compare you with other people.
Who the percentile compares you with
The comparison table holds 3,987 sittings: those that answered every required question of the current form. The tick-box activities and pictures do not count towards that, because an unticked box cannot be told from one you did not see. Sittings in every language the test runs in are pooled.
Two numbers are easy to confuse: the career test has 13,875 completed sittings by 12,926 distinct takers (as of 16 October 2026); 3,987 sittings are in the comparison table, because only sittings that answered every required question of the current form count. Read a percentile as your position among people who chose to take this test online, not in the general population.
How reliable is each scale?
Cronbach's α measures whether the questions of one interest hang together. It was computed on the answers of the 3,987 sittings in the comparison table. 0.70 is the level usually asked of a scale that is reported on its own.
| Interest | α | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Realistic (R) | 0.65 | Below the bar: read as indicative |
| Investigative (I) | 0.72 | At or above the bar |
| Artistic (A) | 0.76 | At or above the bar |
| Social (S) | 0.74 | At or above the bar |
| Enterprising (E) | 0.68 | Below the bar: read as indicative |
| Conventional (C) | 0.65 | Below the bar: read as indicative |
Realistic, Enterprising and Conventional are below 0.70, so read those scores as indicative.
What we have not measured
No retest across sittings has been run, so we cannot say how much your profile would move if you took the test again later. We have not compared this test with a published interest inventory or checked it against careers people actually stayed in. Career matches are suggestions based on your Holland code and the RIASEC code listed for each occupation; they are not a prediction of success or satisfaction.
How to use the result
As a structured prompt for exploring work you had not considered, alongside other information — conversations, job descriptions, trying things out. Not for hiring, selection or any decision about another person.
Sources
Holland, J. L. (1997). Making vocational choices: A theory of vocational personalities and work environments (3rd ed.). Psychological Assessment Resources.
Nye, C. D., Su, R., Rounds, J., & Drasgow, F. (2012). Vocational interests and performance: A quantitative summary of over 60 years of research. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(4), 384–403.
Background research on the model only; neither source evaluated this test.
Changelog
First version of this page, with the comparison table generated 20 September 2026 and production counts as of 16 October 2026.