Rethinking STEM Career Guidance: Do Integrative Career Fit Assessments Lead to More Women in STEM?

• In Event: Toward effective and equitable career-based learning: Multidisciplinary perspectives on the college-to-career transition

Abstract

Objectives & Theoretical Background

Each year, millions of people take career assessments which allow them to identify careers that align with their personal attributes (i.e., person-environment fit; Van Vianen, 2018). Many popular career assessments focus on a single personal attribute, specifically vocational interests, to make career recommendations. However, large and systematic gender differences in vocational interests might lead to gendered career recommendations. For instance, men show stronger investigative interests (i.e., interest in science and research) than women (Su et al., 2009), and these gender differences in vocational interests align with the differential employment rates of men and women in many STEM occupations (Hoff et al., 2025; Su & Rounds, 2015). As such, basing career recommendations entirely on assessments of vocational interests could contribute to the persistent underrepresentation of women in STEM.

Using integrative fit assessments can reduce gender differences in career fit recommendations by incorporating a broader set of individual differences (McCloy et al., 2020). For example, initial evidence revealed much smaller gender differences in creativity and complex problem-solving skills, which are crucial in many STEM careers, relative to physical science and mathematics interests (Liu et al., 2024). Thus, integrative fit assessments can provide more pathways to connect women with STEM careers than vocational interest assessments alone. The current research advances knowledge in this important area of research by testing whether using integrative fit assessments increase the proportion of women recommended to STEM careers relative to interest-only fit assessments.

Methods & Data Sources

A nationally representative sample of 758 (nmen = 375, nwomen = 383) U.S. adults was recruited through Prolific Academic. Consenting participants completed an integrative-fit assessment measuring five domains of individual differences: vocational interests, work values, knowledge, skills, and personality (Liu et a., 2024). We calculated profile correlations for each individual difference domain as an index of fit between participants’ attributes and the corresponding occupational data from the O*NET (Rounds et al., 2021)[1]. We then estimated the proportions of women and men recommended as a ‘good fit’ for each STEM occupation across each fit domain using a profile correlation cut-off of .20 (consistent with the ‘good fit’ cut-off specified in the O*NET Interest Profiler Manual; Rounds et al., 2021). This method maximizes generalizability to practical settings where psychological assessments are used to recommend good fitting jobs for people to explore.

Results & Significance

Results revealed that across multiple STEM occupations, a larger proportion of women were recommended as a ‘good fit’ when skills and personality were used as the basis of fit, relative to when interests or knowledge were used as the basis of fit. As such, these findings suggest that interest-only career assessment might unintentionally reinforce gender gaps in STEM. Moreover, using holistic careers assessments which consider multiple domains of fit could contribute to increasing gender diversity in organizations and the STEM workforce.

Authors

• Layla Dang, Michigan State University

• Kevin Hoff, Michigan State University

• Tara Behrend, Michigan State University