Scaling the Information Load of Occupations: Preliminary Findings of the Fit Between Individual Capacities and Environmental Demands

Person—Environment (P-E) fit models provide a conceptually powerful way to think about career development, vocational choice, and occupational success. The work reported here focuses on yet another pair of P-E criteria: self-reported individual capacity for information processing (the ability to tol...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of career assessment 2008-05, Vol.16 (2), p.156-176
Main Authors: Haase, Richard F., Ferreira, Joaquim Armando G. A., Santos, Eduardo J. R., Aguayo, Gina M., Fallon, Melissa M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anthropology
Career Choice
Career Development
Construct Validity
Cross Cultural Studies
Foreign Countries
Individual Differences
Information Processing
Personality Theories
Portugal
Promotion (Occupational)
Stimuli
United States
Validity
Work Environment
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Summary:Person—Environment (P-E) fit models provide a conceptually powerful way to think about career development, vocational choice, and occupational success. The work reported here focuses on yet another pair of P-E criteria: self-reported individual capacity for information processing (the ability to tolerate information overload from a variety of stimulus sources), and the corresponding demand characteristics for information processing of the occupational environment. To achieve the aims of this project, the authors have borrowed from the literature on information processing, anthropology, and human factors to define the information load context of the occupational environment. The authors have constructed a P-E congruence scheme for five domains of information processing: information load, interpersonal load, change load, activity structure, and time structure, and employed the methods of psychophysics to quantify occupational environments across these domains. The results of this preliminary work, replicated across two cultures, are presented here.
ISSN:1069-0727
1552-4590
DOI:10.1177/1069072707313184