A Short Form of the Career Interest Test

The Career Interest Test (CIT) is a 63-item forced-choice instrument designed to measure seven career interests. Although the measure possesses favorable psychometric properties, there have been recent calls for the development of a shortened version of the inventory. The present article reports on research conducted to develop a short form of the CIT. Using archival data from over 180,000 respondents, categorical confirmatory factor analyses were conducted with limited information methods. Items with the highest absolute factor loadings for each career interest were retained for the short form of the inventory, comprising 21 items, and renamed the 21-CIT. The large within-subject correlations between career interest scores on the full CIT and 21-CIT indicate that the short form provides a comparable degree of content coverage for the career interests. We consider implications for career research and practice as well as suggest directions for future research.