Vocational interests are often seen as trait-like preferences for work-related activities, with individuals trying to develop a congruence between their interests and workplace characteristics. A profile of the vocational interests at the beginning of the vocational educational training (7th and 8th grade) and its predictors should be valuable for research and social and educational policies. The main objective of this research was to examine whether certain groups of demographic characteristics predict the six personality types described by Holland. Two samples of 7th- and 8th-grade students were employed for the analyses (N=237; N=110). It was found that Realistic personality is predicted by masculine gender, while females tend to exhibit more Social personality features. The number of family members was a significant positive predictor of Realistic personality. The number of foreign languages spoken negatively predicted Realistic and Social personalities. The father’s income negatively predicted the Enterprising personality features. The present findings argue in favor of integrating and emphasizing the demographic characteristics of adolescents in the evaluation of their vocational interest profiles. Future studies should consider objective measures of the social-demographic characteristics (instead of self-reported), as well as different analysis methods (such as latent modeling) to support larger sets of predictors. © 2025 Universitatea din Oradea. All rights reserved.
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