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Research and sources

A claim-by-claim evidence ledger

Every source record shows what it supports, what remains outside its scope, how it enters the product, and where its attribution or licence terms can be inspected.

Direct answer: published research establishes RIASEC as a framework for vocational interests and documents the O*NET Mini Interest Profiler in its original career-exploration context. WhatBusiness.ai applies that interest layer within a separately published business-matching model.

Public evidence ledger

Sources checked
15
Claims mapped
6
Licence record
Terms and attribution linked

Evidence vocabulary

Five states keep every claim in scope

Sources, constructs, and product rules play different roles. Each public claim is labelled as an established construct, instrument evidence, adjacent research, a product assumption, or a scope boundary.

01
Established construct
A concept with a substantial published research history and a defined role in the WhatBusiness.ai evidence model.
02
Instrument evidence
Evidence about a named assessment instrument and its original purpose, population, and scoring context.
03
Adjacent research
Research that informs a design choice while the matching decision remains a published WhatBusiness.ai product rule.
04
Product assumption
A published WhatBusiness.ai decision with defined behavioral measures for future calibration.
05
Scope boundary
A precise boundary that keeps a source, assessment result, or product claim in its intended scope.

Source ledger

Inspect the support and the boundary

The complete ledger remains available without filtering. Open any source to inspect authorship, supported claims, scope boundaries, product use, source terms, and the primary link.

Showing 15 of 15 sources

01Established construct

The development, evolution, and status of Holland’s theory of vocational personalities

Journal of Counseling Psychology · Source checked August 1, 2026

What this source supports

  • RIASEC has a long research and practice history as a vocational-interest framework.
  • Published evidence supports the existence and ordering of RIASEC interest types, while congruence has modest predictive power.

What remains outside this source’s scope

  • That RIASEC identifies a person’s best business.
  • That WhatBusiness.ai’s opportunity ranking predicts business success.
Authors
Margaret M. Nauta
Publication type
peer reviewed journal
Use in this product
Reference source
Licence record
Primary source linked
02Instrument evidence

Development of an O*NET Mini Interest Profiler for mobile devices: Psychometric characteristics

National Center for O*NET Development · Source checked August 1, 2026

What this source supports

  • The 30-item Mini Interest Profiler was developed as a brief measure of six RIASEC vocational-interest scales.
  • The report evaluates the instrument in its career-exploration context.

What remains outside this source’s scope

  • WhatBusiness.ai’s custom business-opportunity weights or ranking rules.
  • Prediction of entrepreneurial fit, revenue, or success.
  • Personality or psychometric work-style scoring.
Authors
James Rounds, Colin Wee Jian Ming, Mengyang Cao, Chelsea Song, Phil Lewis
Publication type
government report
Use in this product
Used in the product
Licence record
Primary source linked
03Adjacent research

Are you interested? A meta-analysis of relations between vocational interests and employee performance and turnover

Journal of Applied Psychology · Source checked August 1, 2026

What this source supports

  • Vocational interests have measurable but limited associations with work and training outcomes in the studies analyzed.
  • Combining relevant interests can be more informative than treating one RIASEC dimension as destiny.

What remains outside this source’s scope

  • Business-opportunity recommendation or entrepreneurship outcomes.
  • WhatBusiness.ai’s scoring weights, library, or result roles.
Authors
Chad H. Van Iddekinge, Philip L. Roth, Dan J. Putka, Stephen E. Lanivich
Publication type
peer reviewed journal
Use in this product
Reference source
Licence record
Primary source linked
04Adjacent research

Vocational interests and performance: A quantitative summary of over 60 years of research

Perspectives on Psychological Science · Source checked August 1, 2026

What this source supports

  • Vocational interests have measurable associations with performance and persistence in the work and academic studies analyzed.
  • Interest congruence with an environment was more informative than an interest score alone in this evidence base.

What remains outside this source’s scope

  • Direct transfer of the reported associations to business-opportunity recommendation.
  • WhatBusiness.ai’s weights, feasibility penalties, result roles, or prediction of entrepreneurial success.
Authors
Christopher D. Nye, Rong Su, James Rounds, Fritz Drasgow
Publication type
peer reviewed journal
Use in this product
Reference source
Licence record
Primary source linked
05Adjacent research

Interest congruence and performance: Revisiting recent meta-analytic findings

Journal of Vocational Behavior · Source checked August 1, 2026

What this source supports

  • The analyzed work and academic evidence found interest congruence more strongly associated with performance than interest scores alone.
  • The findings support treating fit as contextual rather than assigning a person one deterministic interest type.

What remains outside this source’s scope

  • That vocational interest congruence has been validated for selecting a business opportunity.
  • That WhatBusiness.ai’s custom ranking predicts revenue, persistence, or success.
Authors
Christopher D. Nye, Rong Su, James Rounds, Fritz Drasgow
Publication type
peer reviewed journal
Use in this product
Reference source
Licence record
Primary source linked
06Scope boundary

O*NET Career Exploration Tools content licence

National Center for O*NET Development · Source checked August 1, 2026

What this source supports

  • Verbatim redistribution is offered under CC BY-ND 4.0 with attribution.
  • Modified or extended tools are directed to the O*NET Tools Developer License.

What remains outside this source’s scope

  • A conclusion that WhatBusiness.ai’s current custom purpose is covered by plain CC BY 4.0.
  • Approval, endorsement, testing, or validation by USDOL/ETA.
Authors
U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration
Publication type
official licence
Use in this product
Terms and attribution linked
Licence record
Conditions recorded
07Scope boundary

O*NET Tools Developer License

National Center for O*NET Development · Source checked August 1, 2026

What this source supports

  • The developer licence includes attribution, modification-disclosure, no-endorsement, and validation conditions for covered adaptations.
  • Software-only integration is distinguished from modification of content or purpose.

What remains outside this source’s scope

  • That a custom business-opportunity matcher has already completed an O*NET-required validation study.
  • That USDOL/ETA has approved, endorsed, or tested WhatBusiness.ai.
Authors
U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration
Publication type
official licence
Use in this product
Terms and attribution linked
Licence record
Conditions recorded
08Adjacent research

Causation and effectuation: Toward a theoretical shift from economic inevitability to entrepreneurial contingency

Academy of Management Review · Source checked August 1, 2026

What this source supports

  • Entrepreneurial reasoning can begin with available means and affordable loss rather than a predetermined opportunity.
  • Who a person is, what they know, and whom they know can inform feasible action under uncertainty.

What remains outside this source’s scope

  • WhatBusiness.ai’s factor weights or ranking implementation.
  • A claim that the product validates demand or predicts success.
Authors
Saras D. Sarasvathy
Publication type
peer reviewed journal
Use in this product
Used in the product
Licence record
Primary source linked
09Adjacent research

Human capital and entrepreneurial success: A meta-analytical review

Journal of Business Venturing · Source checked August 1, 2026

What this source supports

  • Human capital had a statistically significant but small overall association with entrepreneurial success in the studies analyzed.
  • Task-related knowledge and skills were more strongly associated with outcomes than broad education or experience measures.

What remains outside this source’s scope

  • That a skill or credential guarantees a viable business or a successful outcome.
  • WhatBusiness.ai’s 25% skills weight or its treatment of any individual skill.
Authors
Jens M. Unger, Andreas Rauch, Michael Frese, Nina Rosenbusch
Publication type
peer reviewed journal
Use in this product
Reference source
Licence record
Primary source linked
10Scope boundary

Entrepreneurial effectuation: A review and suggestions for future research

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice · Source checked August 1, 2026

What this source supports

  • Effectuation is a recognized entrepreneurship research framework with an identifiable empirical research programme.
  • The maturity and measurement limits of the evidence should remain visible when the framework informs product decisions.

What remains outside this source’s scope

  • Treating effectuation as a complete or universally validated formula for choosing a business.
  • WhatBusiness.ai’s matching weights, constraint penalties, or recommendation accuracy.
Authors
John T. Perry, Gaylen N. Chandler, Gergana Markova
Publication type
peer reviewed journal
Use in this product
Reference source
Licence record
Primary source linked
11Adjacent research

A meta-analytic review of effectuation and venture performance

Journal of Business Venturing · Source checked August 1, 2026

What this source supports

  • The analyzed literature provided initial empirical support for positive associations between selected effectuation principles and venture performance.
  • Available means, partnerships, affordable loss, and contingency can be examined as distinct entrepreneurial decision concepts.

What remains outside this source’s scope

  • That effectuation alone determines which business a specific person should pursue.
  • That WhatBusiness.ai’s operationalization, weights, or recommendations reproduce the study’s measures or predict venture performance.
Authors
Stuart Read, Michael Song, Willem Smit
Publication type
peer reviewed journal
Use in this product
Reference source
Licence record
Primary source linked
12Adjacent research

The ESCO classification

European Commission · Source checked August 1, 2026

What this source supports

  • ESCO organizes occupation, skill or competence, knowledge, and qualification concepts.
  • ESCO is a relevant structured-taxonomy reference for future multilingual or European coverage.

What remains outside this source’s scope

  • That the current WhatBusiness.ai skills questions implement the ESCO taxonomy.
  • Validation of the current opportunity library or ranking model.
Authors
Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion
Publication type
government guidance
Use in this product
Reference source
Licence record
Primary source linked
13Scope boundary

Ten Item Personality Measure (TIPI)

Gosling Lab, University of Texas at Austin · Source checked August 1, 2026

What this source supports

  • TIPI is a distinct, very brief Big Five instrument with published psychometric trade-offs.
  • Personality and vocational interests should not be presented as the same construct.

What remains outside this source’s scope

  • Any claim that WhatBusiness.ai currently measures or scores personality.
  • The current business-opportunity matching weights.
Authors
Samuel D. Gosling, Peter J. Rentfrow, William B. Swann Jr.
Publication type
official instrument page
Use in this product
Not used in the product
Licence record
Permission stated by publisher
14Adjacent research

Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content

Google Search Central · Source checked August 1, 2026

What this source supports

  • Clear who, how, and why disclosures help readers assess content.
  • Trust is central to Google’s E-E-A-T framing, while E-E-A-T is not a single ranking factor.

What remains outside this source’s scope

  • A guaranteed ranking improvement from adding trust pages or structured data.
  • Optimizing engagement interactions for clicks without reader value.
Authors
Google Search Central
Publication type
official guidance
Use in this product
Used in the product
Licence record
Primary source linked
15Adjacent research

What data can we process and under which conditions?

European Commission · Source checked August 1, 2026

What this source supports

  • Personal-data processing should have a defined purpose and use no more data than necessary.
  • Storage periods, accuracy, security, and lawful processing should be addressed transparently.

What remains outside this source’s scope

  • A claim that citation alone establishes WhatBusiness.ai’s legal compliance.
  • Unrestricted reuse of profiling data for unrelated marketing or future services.
Authors
European Commission
Publication type
government guidance
Use in this product
Used in the product
Licence record
Primary source linked

Modifications and disclaimers

O*NET interests inform a custom business-matching model

The interest section uses the 30 O*NET Mini Interest Profiler activity statements to produce six continuous RIASEC interest scores. Those scores are then used as one input to a separate WhatBusiness.ai business-opportunity ranking model.

WhatBusiness.ai changes the downstream purpose and output: it ranks a curated business-opportunity library rather than returning occupations for career exploration.

Required attribution and modification notice

This product 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 O*NET Tools Developer License. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. WhatBusiness.ai has modified all or some of this information. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications.

WhatBusiness.ai has modified the purpose of the O*NET® Career Exploration Tools. The U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA) has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications. As such, USDOL/ETA will not be liable to any third party or end-user for any damages arising out of or from the use or misuse of the modified O*NET Career Exploration Tools or any products incorporating or containing the modified O*NET Career Exploration Tools.

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