VaMoS

Abstract

Knowing our values, motives, and skills enables us to achieve a better match of person and job characteristics, which leads to satisfaction and well-being. However, discrepancies between one’s individual values, motives, and skills occur frequently and entail strain and lower satisfaction. We developed an instrument to address this problem systematically, VaMoS (Affective Values, Cognitive Motives and Skills) (1) provides an efficient way to assess important characteristics with only one questionnaire and (2) detects conflicts between them, which can be solved using career counseling to enhance satisfaction and improve work–life balance. A first online study ( n = 341) was used to reduce the initially developed items based on statistical properties. A second sample ( n = 574) confirmed the statistical model and gave initial evidence of the validity of the theoretical model: A discrepancy between affective values, cognitive motives, and skills was positively related among others with strain and negatively related to work–life balance and satisfaction.