How our data and methods work

Sources, versions, assumptions and limits behind the Career Quiz Atlas tools.

Data sources

O*NET 31.0 Database (text) (2026-08): occupations, alternate titles, tasks, skills, knowledge, work activities, work context, interests, work styles, education and training. CC BY 4.0 (https://www.onetcenter.org/license_db.html).
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: wage distributions (Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics) and employment projections, once loaded; until then pay is shown as not available, never estimated.
Licensing: a curated table quoting the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, with a link and check date on every row. Occupations without a row are shown as “not verified”, which does not mean no license is needed.

This site includes information from the O*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. Career Quiz Atlas has modified all or some of this information. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications.

Work Fit: job lists, Job Fit Finder and Work Style Quiz

Conditions: eight O*NET 31.0 Work Context ratings, each from one O*NET element on its own 1–5 scale: contact with others, dealing with the public, teamwork, freedom to make decisions, time pressure, conflict situations, dealing with unpleasant or angry people, and consequence of error. Different scales are never added together.
Levels: each condition is compared only with the same condition in the other 900+ occupations that have ratings. Occupations are ordered by their rating (equal ratings share a place) and split into fifths, from very low to very high. “Lower than 85% of occupations compared” comes from that order.
Missing data: ratings O*NET marks for suppression (low precision) are not used, and missing ratings are never treated as zero. Occupations without Work Context ratings are not ranked.
Your limits: pay uses the BLS national median (May 2025) and education the BLS typical education needed for entry. A job without published data is listed as “could not be checked”, never as meeting your limit.
Ranking: for each condition you choose, a job inside your accepted range meets that preference, and the further outside it is, the lower it ranks. Among jobs that meet a preference, those closer to the exact level you chose rank higher, so jobs are not tied. Conditions you mark very important count more. Each result says how many of your preferences it meets and gives one trade-off; there is no percentage fit and no prediction that a job will suit you. When too little data covers your choices (under 75% of their weight), a job is not ranked.
Variety: among the jobs that meet all your preferences, the first 20 show at most 3 from the same occupation group (SOC major group), so one kind of work does not fill the list. The rule is the same for every group and never moves a job that misses a preference above one that meets them all.
Job lists: the introvert and low-stress lists use example preferences you can change on the page. There is no combined stress score: work-pressure conditions are shown one by one.
Work Style Quiz: nine prototype questions, each about one condition, plus optional pay and education limits. It is not a personality test or a diagnosis and is not the O*NET Interest Profiler.
Short quiz versions: some campaign pages ask a subset of the same questions, sometimes reworded in plainer language. They use the same answer options and the same scoring as the full quiz; a question left out is simply not assessed.

Work Pressure, Career Right and Readiness quizzes

Work Pressure Quiz: asks about four separate O*NET work conditions (strict deadlines, conflict, unpleasant or angry people, consequence of error) and ranks occupations with the same method as the Work Style Quiz. It describes work conditions. It does not measure stress, burnout or health, and there is no combined stress score.
Is This Career Right for Me?: compares one occupation with your answers, condition by condition, and checks your pay and education limits against BLS figures. It reports how many conditions the typical job meets; it does not give a percentage or a yes or no, because the same occupation differs by employer. Interests are not compared yet.
Career Change Readiness Quiz (readiness-r1): a self-reflection with written rules, not a validated instrument. Six areas stay separate and are never added up: direction (clarity 1–2 = needs work, 3 = in progress, 4–5 = looks ready), exploration (no step, one step, two or more), proof of skills (none, one or two, several examples), training for a target job (your education and the training you would take on against the BLS typical entry education, which is typical and not a legal requirement), time for learning (up to 2, 3–5, 6 or more hours a week) and financial cushion (under 1, 1–3, 3 or more months of expenses, a common rule of thumb and not financial advice). An unanswered question is left out, never counted as zero. The next steps list areas that need work first, then areas in progress. The result describes what you have done so far, not your chance of success.

Career Interest Quiz

Instrument: the 30 questions of the O*NET Mini Interest Profiler, with their published wording, order and five-point scale (onet-mini-ip-30-2016). Career Quiz Atlas builds the screens only. Taken from the official Mini-IP report (2016) and Interest Profiler Manual.
Scores: each answer counts 0 (Strongly Dislike) to 4 (Strongly Like), added per interest area, 0 to 20. All 30 answers are needed for a result.
Careers: a Pearson correlation between your six scores and the O*NET interest profile of each occupation, with the Manual's cutoffs: .729 or above is Best Fit, .608 to .728 is Great Fit, and other correlations that are not negative can fill the list as Good Fit, up to 10 per Job Zone. Career Quiz Atlas applies these published rules itself, so a list can differ from My Next Move when the data versions differ.
Limits: it describes interests, not ability, and it does not predict success. The result is not combined with the work condition or career change quizzes. USDOL/ETA has not approved or endorsed Career Quiz Atlas.
Credit: this site includes information from the O*NET Career Exploration Tools by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY-ND 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.

Notes shown during the quizzes

Between sections, the quizzes show a short note. A note may repeat what you answered, but it never labels you or infers anything beyond your answers.

Less contact is not the same as working alone: Contact with other people, dealing with the public and teamwork are three separate O*NET ratings. A job can have little public contact but close teamwork, or the other way round. Source: O*NET 31.0 Work Context: 4.C.1.a.4, 4.C.1.b.1.f, 4.C.1.b.1.e.
Pressure comes in different kinds: Strict deadlines, conflict and serious consequences of mistakes are separate work conditions. Career Quiz Atlas never adds them into one stress score: a job can be calm on one and demanding on another. Source: O*NET 31.0 Work Context: 4.C.3.d.1, 4.C.1.d.1, 4.C.3.a.1.
Next: pay and education are limits: The last questions do not rank jobs. They remove jobs whose national median pay is below your minimum or whose typical entry education is above your limit. Source: BLS OEWS May 2025 wages; BLS Employment Projections typical entry education.
What makes a workday draining: Feeling drained often comes from specific conditions, such as constant deadlines or frequent conflict, rather than from work in general. Conditions differ a lot between occupations. Source: O*NET 31.0 Work Context: 4.C.3.d.1, 4.C.1.d.1, 4.C.1.b.1.f, 4.C.1.a.4.
The wrong workplace or the wrong work?: A workplace mismatch (manager, team, pay or schedule) can often be fixed by changing role or employer in the same field. A career mismatch is about the work itself and usually needs a different kind of role. Source: Career Quiz Atlas decision rules quiz-r0.1 (self-reflection, not a validated instrument).
What to check before you quit: Three things decide how hard a switch will be: proof of the skills a new role needs, the time you can give to learning, and the income you could live on during the change. Source: Career Quiz Atlas decision rules quiz-r0.1 (self-reflection, not a validated instrument).
The same job can differ by employer: O*NET ratings describe what is typical for an occupation across the U.S. A small clinic and a large hospital can ask the same occupation for very different amounts of contact, pressure or freedom. Source: O*NET 31.0 Work Context: occupation-level averages.

How the tools calculate

Transferable skills: compares the typical O*NET skill levels (0–7) of two occupations for every skill rated important (3 or more on 1–5) in the target. Within 0.5 level points counts as near, up to 1.5 as a partial gap. The coverage index weights each skill by its importance. It describes occupations, not you.
Career alternatives: closeness across skills (35%), work activities (25%), knowledge (20%), work context (10%) and interests (10%). Preparation level (O*NET job zone) and licensing are shown next to each option and are never hidden by a high score.
Qualifications: the education, experience and training that current workers or occupational experts report, plus licensing rows. No fixed time to qualify is given.
Cost of switching: month-by-month cash flow under your own assumptions, compared with staying; low, base, high and downside cases.
Career Switch Quiz: a structured self-reflection with 15 prototype questions and written rules. It is not a validated psychological test and gives options to explore, not verdicts or probabilities.

Versions

Every result shows the dataset version and the method version that produced it. Current versions: /api/site/v1/methodology/versions.

Limits

Results compare occupations in general. They are not proof that you have a skill, not a salary offer and not a prediction that a switch will succeed.