In short, this type of analysis, which, whether accepted seriously or not, represents the latest word from a distinguished psychologist on the differences among the occupations, gives us no more assistance toward the basis of a vocational psychograph than did the catalogs of sterling virtues provided by the employers in their replies to the questionnaires.
Various other types of analysis have been proposed, as well as different criteria, on the basis of which the occupations might be thrown under some form of psychological classification. Thus it has been pointed out that the traditional distinctions on the basis of materials handled or type of product produced, give little indication of the type of activity involved or of the characteristics necessary for success. As Schneider has remarked: "If a boy were successful in wood-shop work, he was told he would make a good carpenter; however, wood-turning in a shop and outdoor carpentry are dissimilar types, while wood-turning in a shop and metal-turning in a shop are similar types."
Schneider has for many years considered the problems involved in adjusting human beings to congenial types of work, and prefers to classify both men and jobs on the basis of certain broad characteristics which refer more particularly to interests, habits, preferences and similar temperamental factors than to the technical psychological mechanisms employed in the work. He writes: "Every individual has certain broad characteristics and every type of work requires certain broad characteristics. The problem, then, is to state the broad characteristics, to devise a rational method to discover these characteristics (or talents) in individuals, to classify the types of jobs by the talents they require and to guide the youth with certain talents into the type of job which requires those talents. This is a big problem, but one possible of measurable solution, or, at worst, possible of a solution immeasurably superior to our present haphazard methods."
As an illustration of what Schneider means by "broad characteristics," take his distinction between the "settled" and the "roving" types. "There is a type of man who wants to get on the same car every morning, get off at the same corner, go to the same shop, ring up at the same clock, stow his lunch in the same locker, go to the same machine and do the same class of work, day after day. Another type of man would go crazy under this routine; he wants to move about, meet new people, see and do new things. The first is settled; the second is roving. The first might make a good man for a shop manufacturing a standard product; the second might make a good railroad man or a good outdoor carpenter."
Or, again, consider his distinction on the basis of "scope." "Then there are two types—one of which likes to fuss with an intricate bit of mechanism, while the other wants the task of big dimensions—the watchmaker, the engraver, the inlayer, the painter of miniatures, on the one hand; the bridge builder, the steel-mill worker, the train dispatcher, the circus man on the other. One has small scope, the other large scope."
Basing his analyses mainly on the enterprises of manufacture, construction and transportation, and recognizing that other broad characteristics would probably be listed if different types of occupation were also considered, Schneider gives a list of sixteen classifications which may be applied either to the individual or to the type of work. These are as follows:
a—Physical strength; physical weakness.
b—Mental; manual.
c—Settled; roving.
d—Indoor; outdoor.
e—Directive; dependent.
f—Original (creative); imitative.
g—Small scope; large scope.
h—Adaptable; self-centered.
i—Deliberate; impulsive.
j—Music sense.
k—Color sense.
l—Manual accuracy; manual inaccuracy.
m—Mental accuracy (logic); mental inaccuracy.
n—Concentration (mental focus); diffusion.
o—Rapid mental coördination; slow mental coördination.
p—Dynamic; static.
It must be said that the characteristics of the various types of work here enumerated are pretty much the features which have in the past guided such individuals as really chose their vocation rather than found it waiting for them, made a random selection, or seized the first available opportunity. The paired adjectives probably afford truer descriptions of various types of work than they do of types of individuals. Most individuals of one's acquaintance one would have to group neither under the one nor the other extreme, but in an average group which would show each of the opposed tendencies under special circumstances or would show no particularly marked degree of either tendency. Observation of such individuals for long periods of time and under a variety of circumstances would be required before these classifications could be made out by a stranger or by a professional counsellor. Even then such a classification could hardly be said to be psychological in any technical sense of the word, and it is not very probable that psychological training or experience would facilitate or render more reliable such classification. The question of to what degree the individual's judgment of his own characteristics may be relied on in such an analysis we must defer until a later section where that is taken up as the main subject of discussion.
The reliable vocational psychograph, which proceeds by means of a careful preliminary analysis of the qualities required in the given work, and uses specially adapted tests with reliable norms for their evaluation, is not yet available for any single occupation. The preliminary analyses so far made, whether by employer, psychologist, or engineer, give us little guidance, and until such guidance is forthcoming the special adaptation of tests and the accumulation of norms and standards cannot make much practical progress. The inadequacy of the analyses already offered should not discourage further effort in this direction. The alignment of the simple industrial processes along the general intelligence scale has already been begun. The description of the more complex tasks in terms of identifiable mental characteristics is a much more difficult task, but this very difficulty is at once a sign of the importance of the problem.