A New Approach to Exploring and Profiling Interest

• In Event: Assessment of Interest: New Approaches and New Insights

Abstract

Exploration is a process that is triggered when individuals are confronted with unfamiliar topics or environments beyond the limits of their experience that they either wish to, or need to, engage with. In contrast, the process of searching is a goal or task oriented approach appropriate when at least some of the environment is known and understood. This subtle distinction between exploring and searching is central to the new method proposed in this paper. Self-report questionnaires designed to gather responses about a person’s interests can only report upon existing interests - requiring them to search for appropriate responses within the limits of their experience. In contrast, the approach used by the My Interest Now for Engagement (MINE) tool presents a process of exploration of interests driven by a person’s general preferences and desires and involves the potential to respond to objects, activities or ideas outside their experience. This new exploratory method allows for a wider range of possible responses than self-report questionnaires allow, ranging from triggered interest (‘I might be interested’) to well-developed interest (‘I have always been/am very interested’). This paper describes the development, validation and findings of the MINE tool, which is designed to identify students’ interests and to profile the phase of development of those interests using the Four-Phase Model of Interest Development (Hidi & Renninger, 2006). The MINE tool is a development of iFISH software (Pearce, 2008) and uses an animated and interactive environment to facilitate exploration and reporting of a person’s interests, as well as indicating cognitive and affective dimensions related to their experience when engaging with selected interest content. The interactive nature of the tool allows students to explore and select from a collection of 60 potential interests using interactive sliders that represent five dimensions of experience; indoor-outdoor, creative-practical, technological-natural, solitary-social and serious-fun. Manipulation of sliders animates and re-orders graphical representations of the 60 potential interests in an on-line and real-time environment. In contrast to a self-reported survey, this process allows for the triggering of new interests as well as reporting existing interests. Validation of the content and processes of the tool is derived from analysis of responses from 136 first year undergraduate students and 180 secondary students. Initial results gathered from 60 participants aged 12 to 15 in one secondary school on two occasions two months apart demonstrated that there is a significant positive correlation between the ratings for ‘how long’ and ‘how often’ for the 115 interests chosen on both occasions, indicating that the responses were consistent across the two measurement points. In addition moderate to strong correlations we found for the affective responses ‘excited’, ‘proud’ and ‘hopeful’ in the 97 established interests selected on both occasions. The MINE tool is in its early phase of development and further examinations of the relationship between the experiential, cognitive and affective dimensions of interest are ongoing as the methodology has proved to be valid and reliable.

Authors

• Robert B.W. Ely, The University of Melbourne

• Mary D. Ainley, University of Melbourne

• Jon M. Pearce, University of Melbourne