The term interests refers to what an individual likes and dislikes, as associated with specific tasks, activities, or objects. Interests are a function of factors such as values, family background and experiences, social class, culture, and environment. For 80 years, interests have been one of the most useful and most enduring constructs in career development.
Generally, the study of leisure interests, unlike the decades of work with vocational interests, has been confounded by the way in which such interests are measured. Instruments designed to assess vocational interests (e.g., Strong Interest Inventory, Self-Directed Search, Campbell Interest and Skill Survey) ask respondents to indicate the extent to which they like or do
The term “knowledge interests” (Erkenntnisinteresse) was coined by German philosopher and social theorist Jürgen Habermas in his work Knowledge and Human Interests (Habermas 1968/1987). Habermas distinguished three kinds of knowledge interests constitutive for particular object domains and their scientific investigation. According to him, the interest of control through prediction is constitutive of the natural sciences