Integrating Individual Differences in Career Assessment: The Atlas Model of Individual Differences and the Strong Ring

Career assessment methods often include measures of individual differences constructs, such as interests, personality, abilities, and values. Although many researchers have recently called for the development of integrated models, career counseling professionals have long faced the challenge of integrating this information into their practice. The authors examine the use of integrated models to enhance the career counseling process, including Armstrong, Day, McVay, and Rounds's (2008) RIASEC-based Atlas Model of Individual Differences (using Holland's 1997, typology of 6 interest types: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social., Enterprising, and Conventional [RIASEC]) and Armstrong, Smith, Donnay, and Rounds's (2004) basic interests-based Strong Ring. These models provide a structured framework for presenting clients with assessment feedback that emphasizes connections between interests, personality, and abilities. In recent years, there has been a call for integration across domains of individual differences measurement. Although researchers who study an individual differences domain, such as interests, personality, abilities, or values, tend to focus on only one set of constructs at a time, they have also realized that a more effective understanding of how individuals adjust to their environments will emerge when multiple areas are assessed simultaneously. Ackerman and Heggestad (1997), initially working from an ability-based perspective, identified several areas of convergence between abilities, personality, and interests and referred to these integrated sets of individual differences measures as trait complexes. Lubinski (2000) referred to these attempts to move beyond domain-constrained measurement to combine information about multiple constructs as trait constellations. Armstrong, Day, JVlcVay, and Rounds (2008) proposed using interests as the organizational framework for integrating assessment information into the Adas Model of Individual Differences. This model primarily uses Holland's (1997) structure (i.e., the six interest types: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional, collectively known as RIASEC) as an organizational structure for representing trait complexes or constellations for use in career counseling and other applied settings. An alternative interest-based model, the Strong Ring (Armstrong, Smith, Donnay, & Rounds, 2004), has also been proposed using basic interest measures. In this article, we examine the recent calls for integration, highlighting the potential utility of integrated models when working with career counseling clients who are making educational and career- related decisions. We then examine two interest- based models proposed by Armstrong and his colleagues, the Atlas Model of Individual Differences (Armstrong et al., 2008) and the Strong Ring (Armstrong et al., 2004), that are part of this emerging movement, and we consider how these models can be used to integrate individual differences measures when working with career counseling clients who are making academic and career- related decisions. Finally, we provide a theoretical underpinning for these integrated models by drawing on recent developmental research by Denissen, Zarrett, and Eccles (2007), Hogan's (1983) Socioanalytic Model of Identity Development (Hogan ck Roberts, 2004), and the gravitational hypothesis (Reeve & Heggestad, 2004) to identify mechanisms that promote the convergence between interests, personality, abilities, and other individual differences measures. Integration and Career Counseling Ackerman and Heggestad (1997) and Lubinski (2000) have made important contributions to the recent debate about how to integrate information from the wide range of individual differences measures currently used in research. However, the notion of integrating information from multiple sources is hardly a new idea for career counselors. Indeed, there is a long history in career counseling of integrating information about an individual, such as life and work history data, assessment results, and self-descriptions, that can be traced back to the foundational work of Parsons (1909). …