Abstract

In the field of vocational counseling, there are few instruments with an emphasis on engineering. For this reason, this research was developed in 2014 with the objective of constructing a test on vocational profiles for three Engineering branches in the Technological Institute of Costa Rica (ITCR), within a sample of 496 students and 10 teachers from the courses of Electronic Engineering, Computing Engineering and Industrial Maintenance.

In accordance with this purpose, the research was carried out in three phases. In the first one, a questionnaire was applied to obtain information on the vocational profiles for these careers. It was synthesized for later review with experts.

From the elaborated profiles, items were written and included in the preliminary version of a test to detect tasks, interests and skills related to ​​engineering in the ITCR. This test was applied in the second phase in conjunction with the skill scales and interests of Holland’s Self-Directed Search trial.

In the final phase, after performing a psychological analysis (descriptive statistics, reliability analysis and item discrimination, as well as exploratory and confirmatory factorial analysis), the revised version of this test was applied, and the most appropriate elements were selected to integrate the final version of it.

The results showed evidence of validity and reliability in most scales and psychometric indicators proved to be better than the Holland tests.

Keywords: Vocational interests; vocational tasks; skills; engineering; academic and career satisfaction