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Critique of the Strong Interest Inventory
Critique of the Strong Interest Inventory
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Critique of the Strong Interest Inventory
Introduction
The Strong Interest Inventory (SII) is a commonly used unique psychological measuring instrument in existence. It is mainly used in vocational counselling. It was first published in 1927, with a newer version in 1994. Both versions bare resemblance in construction and empirical procedures traditionally used in its development. The main goal of any psychological assessment is to assist in solving problem by providing information and recommendations necessary for the most optimal decisions to be made related to a particular client.
The Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment is similar to the strong Interest Inventory, and both provide very reliable information available concerned with career interests, personality, and work environments. Both tools differ in their unique ways in how they help individuals understand both themselves and their career options (Solso, Homer , & Kimberly, 1998).
Purpose and nature of the Test
The Strong Interest Inventory is an interest inventory applied in the assessment of careers. It is also widely applied in educational guidance, and has become the most popular career assessment tool. It was developed by psychologist E. K. Strong to assist people retiring from the military search and find suitable jobs. The modern version was revised by psychologist John L. Holland, and consists of two hundred and ninety one items. Each of these items asks an individual to indicate their preferences from five responses. The test is based on the assessment of interests that makes a great difference from aptitude tests or personality assessments.
The test can be taken within 25 minutes, and the scores calculated by a computer. These results make it possible to define how some interests compare to the interests of people employed successfully in specific jobs. Description of the purpose and nature of the test is an interest inventory for a client to measure his or her interest and interpret the optimal career path. It is targeted to people who want a job change, career change, or assistance with career development opportunities as it provides a solid, dependable guide for clients. The principle purpose is to identify general areas of interest, specific activities, and occupations for further exploration. Other clients who would be interested in taking the test include workers seeking more satisfying work in organisations, students exploring career options, employers seeking to retain the best employees and star staff, and other people in their mid life or elderly planning to retire.
The results of the test includes: scores of the level of interest for each of the six Holland codes or general occupational themes, Scores on thirty basic interest scales such as art, science, and public speaking, Scores on 224 occupational scales that shows the similarity between the respondents interests and those of people employed in each of the 122 occupations, scores of five personal style scales consisting of learning, working, leadership, risk taking, and team orientation. Finally, scores on three administrative scales used to identify test errors or unusual profiles. Strong Interest Inventory is a registered trademark of CPP, Inc of Mountain View, California.
Administration and Evaluation
The evaluation covers the history of the instrument, the current form, content, administration, and evidence of reliability and validity. The people with great interest in the test are human resource practitioners specializing in areas of selection and development, recruitment and selection specialists, managers or consultants who may want to apply ability or aptitude tests within selection and assessment, and coaches wishing to apply ability tests and interest inventories for purposes of career guidance (Russell, 1999).
Strong Interest Inventory is an open access program, that is, no previous experience or knowledge is required provided one goes through a certification program such as Occupational, Ability Programme (OPP) of the British Psychological Society (BPS). This program registers the test users to be able to administer the instrument, and successful delegates are accredited to use ability tests competently and adhering to international standards. These qualifications are suitable and offer enough portfolios in the ability and aptitude tests, which can be targeted to assessment, selection, recruitment, and career guidance (Patten, 2002).
Evaluation can be categorized into practical evaluation, technical evaluation, and summary evaluation. Successful career developments depends one’s ability to conduct an accurate self evaluation. The evaluation of Strong Interest Inventory must consider factors significant to the client (Raymore, Godbey, & Crawford, 1994)
Types of psychological test used
The main types of psychological test used in the articles are the TAT (Thematic Apperception Test). In the articles, the thematic test are used for assessing the personality through a projective technique that focuses on the dominant drives, sentiments, their emotions, complexes as well as the attitudes of employees. It also focuses on the conflicts (Woodside, et al, 2000).
Examinee responding modes
The examinee responding mode is also highlighted in the papers. Most of the examinee responding modes was very high, with many of them scoring the 111A, in the Arithmetic Reasoning (AR), Mathematics Knowledge (MK), Paragraph Comprehension (PC), and Word Knowledge (WK). This is very high response and was likely drawn from very intelligent personnel (Raymore, Godbey, & Crawford, 1994).
Theories in which the test are based
The test was based mainly on the classical test theory and the item response theory as they are the most effective theories for psychological tests
Validity and reliability
The information used in the articles has a very high internal and external validity despite a relatively low reliability scores. For example, the sample groups were highly was hugely randomized and the researcher took appropriate care and diligence shown in the allocation of the controls. The articles meets all the criterion validity and predictive validity, however, there is no concurrent validity based on the facts of the information used. However, the reliability of the results is very low as the research fails to yield concurrent results (Patten, 2002).
Usefulness of this test for your purposes as a future counsellor
The test results are very useful and may be applicable in the near future, however, caution must be taken when suing the results of the research in future, and there are many changes that will have taken place in the field that may have caused a shift in the current benchmarked standards for effectives. This is to say, future uses of the information in the article, must be subjected to rigorous testing and vetting. The failure of the article to meet the reliability status is also another reason for rigorous research. It is also recommended the test results be used in addition to other test results in order for it to be effective
References
Raymore, L., Godbey, G. and Crawford, D. (1994), ‘‘Self-esteem, gender and socioeconomic status: their relation to perceptions of constraint on leisure among adolescents’’, Journal of Leisure Research, Vol. 26 No. 2, pp. 99-118.
Woodside, A.G., Crouch, G.I., Mazanec, J.A., Oppermannn, M. and Sakai, M.Y. (2000), Consumer Psychology of Tourism, Hospitality, and Leisure, CABI Publishing, New York, NY.
Patten, Mildred L. (2002). Understanding research methods: An Overview of the essentials (3rd ed.). Los Angeles: Pyrczak Publishing.
Schutt, Russell K. (1999). Investigating the social world: the Process and practice of research (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press.
Solso, Robert L., Johnson, Homer H., & Beal, M. Kimberly. (1998). Experimental psychology: a case approach (6th ed.). New York: Longman.
Summary and outline for Tharp chapters 10-12. Summary of The Creative Habit
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Summary and outline for Tharp chapters 10-12. Summary of “The Creative Habit”
The creative habit is based on the life and career of Twyla Tharp. The author has made a significant impact in the world of music and dance through her contribution in the society. The documentation of her strides towards success reinforces her principles in terms to her career. The creative habit is unique in that it offers an architectural view in regard to music. She thus manages to combine the two creating a masterpiece. The book acts as a source of inspiration for young minds that can use it in facing some of the worldly issues (Tharp, chapter 10-12).
The chapters are arranged systematically so as to cover the journey of any achiever. One of the significant aspects of the book is the authors take on identifying creativity. Creative rut involves identifying with a form of dance. Once an individual projects their creative groove, they set the pace for success.
On an individual’s search of personal and identity, they are fazed by the lack of clarity that comes with being and learner. This makes an achiever loose the initial goal that they had set for themselves. Goals tend to change during ones journey, following the significant goals ensures a clear path.
One of the ways that a person remains in line with their goals is by following their passion. Passion maintains the purity that comes with any art. It is expected for one to get lost along the way. Through passion one is able to follow the direction they choose for the possibility of success.
Apart from losing sight of one’s goals, an individual faces the risk of dealing with failure. Failure is a key aspect when fighting for a success. It serves both as an advantage and a disadvantage. The book ensures that a person derives the positive from any situation.
Learning how to deal with failure is a talent on its own. Failures can make or break a person on their quest to achieve their goals. When an individual fails a certain attempt, they are exposed to all sorts of vulnerabilities. This in turn, reduces the self esteem of an individual who has to make a choice on whether to succeed or fail.
Failure is viewed as a negative aspect due to the repercussions it has on the self esteem of an individual. This negative aspect can however, be used to make one acquire a new form of strength. Deriving strength from failure is an essential quality to posses in dance.
Having a strong will enables the success of the least promising situations. Tharp uses her success to showcase various situations that are not dance related. Combining architecture and dance is one of the features that differentiate the book from the rest of the motivational books.
The last chapter seeks to conclude the contents of the overall book. There are a few aspects that stand out in this area. One of the factors is centered on mastering of an art. The art of dance like any other requires a keen eye in order to overcome. This offers challenging situations that separate the masters from the students. Mastering an art involves manifesting the price to be won. This places pressure on an individual that is ideal for their overall success (Tharp, chapter 10-12).
Works cited
Tharp, Twyla. The creative habit: learn it and use it for life. New York: a practical guide, Simon and Shuster, 2003. Print.
Critique of the Strategic and Tactical Approach taken by Red Bull in Attempting to Create a Culture for its Brand
Critique of the Strategic and Tactical Approach taken by Red Bull in Attempting to Create a Culture for its Brand
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Introduction
Brands are collections of functional and emotional values that promise stakeholders unique experiences. A brand is a culture because the consumers who use a particular brand a number of times often identify themselves with that brand. Such consumers become a ‘cult’ as they cannot be separated from the brand which they have a deep association with. Therefore, a brand should have its own culture, from which every product derives (Kapferer, 2008, p. 184). This paper discusses the aspects of brand culture used to market Red Bull, an energy drink. In reference to Red Bull, the paper addresses how cult brands are created and developed through brand extensions, endorsements and associations. To achieve this, the paper will investigate theories that try to explain how brands create experiential connections with brand users to generate loyalty and attachment.
Overview of the Red Bull brand
Red Bull has grown as one of the most popular drinks in the energy drinks category. Its history dates back to 1987 when Dietrich Mateschitz, a marketing executive at Unilever and Procter & Gamble, introduced the energy drink in Austria. Mateschitz modified the ingredients of Red Bull to make it suit Western tastes as an energy drink on its own, and Europe thus become the mainstay of the brand although it had originated in Asia (Roll, 2006, p. 199). Although the drink faced some restrictions at the start in Austria due to its ingredients, it later spread quickly to neighbouring countries such as Germany, Switzerland, Hungary and Slovenia (Dahlén, Lange & Smith, 2009, p. 315).
One of the key reasons for the success of Red Bull has been its unconventional marketing communications that range from creating buzz, using word-of-mouth publicity to sponsoring extreme sports events (Roll, 2006, p. 199). The communications have been in synchrony with the overall brand personality of being a cool, hip and rebellious brand. The resistance that the drink faced when entering the market in France, Germany and other key European countries may have been an obstacle to the brand’s success but it also helped to identity the product with its consumers when it eventfully entered these markets. As Temporal (2006, p. 12) notes, the market share of Red Bull has been growing at an annual rate of 15 to 25 percent. The brand is also popular in the United States with a 47 percent market share in 2006 and accounts for 70 percent of the global market share in terms of energy drinks (Temporal, 2006, p. 12).
Red Bull as a cult brand
As mentioned above, the popularity of the Red Bull brand can largely be attributed to the brand’s marketing communications strategy. The company used a number of marketing strategies including word-of-mouth, sponsorships, athlete endorsers, sampling programmes, point of purchase marketing and electronic media buys. However, word-of-mouth was the most preferred method because the company presumed that best method was to get the consumers who used the product to give testaments to others. Notably, traditional communication tools such as mass media advertising were at first avoided for more localised methods (Dahlén, Lange & Smith, 2009, p. 315). With this strategy, consumers in neighbouring countries such as Hungary and Germany who had not been in Austria got to know about the product. According to Schumann (2009, p. 195), word-of-mouth makes at least three contributions to marketing theory. First, it has a strong positive effect on customer satisfaction as customers spread the message about the product in question. This influences customer trust and leads to brand loyalty. Second, word-of-mouth is valid for ongoing service relationships. As Schumann (2009, p. 195) notes, the strategy enables customers to evaluate their product or service provider – which thus affects their decisions. Third, word-of-mouth has different effects across cultures (Schumann, 2009, p. 195). Along this line, while the word-of-mouth marketing strategy made Red Bull popular, it also influenced (sometimes negatively) how different consumers in different countries perceived the brand. The benefit of using word-of-mouth in marketing is that the strategy not only needs minimal cost but also enables the message to be spread further than its source (Katz, 2010, p. 112). This is how Red Bull was able to extend to other countries, hence the over-mystification of the brand
The over-mystification of Red Bull is what led the perception of the brand as a cult brand. According to Kumar (2007, p. 383), a cult brand is one that offers a group-affiliated, brand-based experience to consumers who are obsessed with the brand and promotes the relationship within the members of the cult. In this case, the ‘cult’ included a wide range of consumers who had the need for a stimulating drink – and this was clear in Red Bull’s slogan ‘Red Bull gives you wings’.
Red Bull also ventured into brand extensions to increase its coverage and hold of the market. In 2003, noting that 21 percent of the soft drinks consumed in the United Kingdom were sugar-free, as were over 30 percent in the United States, the company decided to come up with a sugar free version of Red Bull – Red Bull Sugarfree (Keller, 2008). As Cheverton (2006) notes, brand extension is inevitable particularly where the existing brand is perceived to have matured but there seem to be no other alternatives to innovate. Thus, the existing brand is used to support the launch of the new product. In this case, the Red Bull Energy Drink was used as the backdrop for the introduction of Red Bull Sugarfree. This enabled the brand to capture an even wider market.
Other factors that reinforced Red Bull as a cult brand are brand endorsements and associations. The Red Bull marketing strategy concentrated in the brand’s slogan and engaged in a number of endorsements in sports that required physical endurance such as motocross, surfing, basejumping, and skateboarding (Waxler, 2004, p. 126). This association with extreme sports events undoubtedly added value to Red Bull’s brand equity, which is the total awareness and perceived worth of the brand in the mind of consumers (Smith & Zook, 2011, p. 38).
How brands create experiential connections with brand users to generate loyalty and attachment
The Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) model (Keller, 2001) can be used to explain how strong brands are built and how the brands create experiential connections with users. According to Keller (2001, p. 17), building a strong brand involves four steps: (1) establishing the appropriate brand identity; (2) creating the appropriate brand meaning through strong, favourable and distinctive brand associations; (3) eliciting positive, accessible brand responses; and (4) developing brand relationships with customers that are featured by intense, active loyalty. Attaining these four steps in turn requires establishment of six brand-building blocks __ brand performances, brand resilience, brand imagery, brand feelings, brand judgements and brand resonance. As Keller (2001, p. iv) suggests, the most valuable brand-building block is brand resonance, and it occurs when all the other brand building blocks are already established. True brand resonance occurs when customers express a high level of loyalty to the brand such that they aggressively seek means to relate with the brand and share their experiences with others (Keller, 2001, p. iv). In relation to this, Smilansky (2009, p. 61) argues that experiential marketing aims to convert consumers into brand advocates who love and promote their favourite brands.
To understand how Red Bull has achieved experiential connections with brand users to generate loyalty and attachment, it is important to look at various aspects such as brand attributes, positioning, and values. Red Bull builds on its functional product dimensions and their benefits such as improved performance, metabolism, concentration, vigilance, and reaction, while at the same time riding on an integrated marketing platform based on extreme sports to communicate the brand’s emotional dimensions (Temporal, 2006, p. 13).
As regards brand positioning, the universal slogans ‘Red Bull gives you wings’ and ‘Red Bull stimulates body and mind’ are adjudged to relate to the energy lift claimed by the drink and promised to the consumer (Temporal, 2006, p. 13).
The Red Bull communication strategy also depicts brand values or personality. According to Temporal (2006, p. 13), the distinctive traits that determine how the Red Bull brand communicates with its audience across the media are individuality, humour, innovation and non-conformism. These values are consistently projected as the heart and soul of the brand, which consumers can identify with and build an attachment with.
Conclusion
In summation, Red Bull is one of the brands that have grown immensely to become a cult brand. A cult brand is a brand that be affiliated to a particular group of consumers, such that they are obsessed with it and are always willing to promote it. This can be linked to the marketing communications used to market Red Bull, starting with word-of mouth to detailed strategies such as sports endorsements. The Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) model has been used in this paper to illustrate how brands create experiential connections with brand users to generate loyalty and attachment, beginning with the four key strategies to build such a brand. Notably, a strong brand is achieved when brand resonance occurs such that customers portray a high level of loyalty to the brand and aggressively seek be related with the brand and share their experiences about it. For Red Bull, this has been achieved through brand attributes, positioning, and values.
References
Cheverton, P 2006, Understanding Brands, Kogan Page Publishers, London.
Dahlén, M, Lange, F & Smith, T 2009, Marketing Communications: A Brand Narrative Approach, John Wiley and Sons, New York.
Kapferer, J 2008, The New Strategic Brand Management: Creating and Sustaining Brand Equity Long Term, 4th edn, Kogan Page Publishers, London.
Keller, KL 2008, Best Practice Cases in Branding, Lessons from the World’s Strongest Brands, 3rd edn, Prentice-Hall, New York.
Keller, KL, 2001, ‘Building customer-based brand equity: A blueprint for creating strong brands’, Working Paper, Report No. 01.107. 2001.
Kumar S R 2007, Marketing and Branding: The Indian Scenario, Pearson Education India, New Delhi.
Pride, WM & Ferrell, OC 2006, Marketing: Concepts and Strategies, 13th edn, Cengage Learning, New York.
Roll, M 2006, Asian Brand Strategy: How Asia Builds Strong Brands, Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
Schumann, JH 2009, The Impact of Culture on Relationship Marketing in International Services: A Target Group-Specific Analysis in the Context of Banking Services,Gabler Verlag, Cologne.
Smilansky, S 2009, Experiential Marketing: A Practical Guide to Interactive Brand Experiences, Kogan Page Publishers, London.
Smith, PR & Zook, Z 2011, Marketing Communications: Integrating Offline and Online with Social Media, 5th edn, Kogan Page Publishers.
Temporal, P 2006, Asia’s star brands, John Wiley and Sons, New York.
Waxler, C 2004, Stocking up on Sin: How to Crush the Market with Vice-Based Investing, John Wiley and Sons, New York.