Perception of occupations: Aspects versus dimensions

The perceived structure of occupations and the occupational aspects underlying it were examined. In Study 1 the occupational aspects of 66 social science students were elicited and used to predict the similarity between occupations. In the second study 24 occupations were rated by 44 subjects on the aspects identified as central in Study 1. Increasing the number of aspects from two dimensions (People-Things, Data-Ideas) to 13 aspects significantly increased the percentage of variance accounted for in the perceived occupational structure from 35 to 76%. The hierarchical model was found to fit the derived proximity relations among occupations better than the circular model.