The Hogan Motives, Values Preferences Inventory (MVPI) reveals a person’s core values that motivate choices and decisions, as well as their goals and interests. This makes the MVPI an invaluable tool for determining the kind of environment, team, department and corporate culture in which a person will perform best. This benefits the person in ensuring they are choosing the right environment in which to work, and it benefits organisations by helping them to ensure that a new hire's values are consistent with those of the organisation. It also enables both person and organization to predict occupational success and job satisfaction.

The MVPI is developed from 80 years of academic research on motivation. It has 10 scales to measure motives based upon a comprehensive, business-based system of values. Values, preferences, and interests are all motivational aspects: values are the most broad and abstract motive, and interests are the most narrow and specific kind of motive.

The MVPI 10 scales identify what people want, rather than how they typically behave, and are measured across the following:

1. Recognition - responsive to attention, approval, and praise

2. Power - desire for success, accomplishment, status and control

3. Hedonism - orientation for fun, pleasure, and enjoyment

4. Altruistic - desire to help others and contribute to society

5. Affiliation - desire for and enjoyment of social interaction

6. Tradition - dedication, strong personal beliefs, and obligation

7. Security - need for predictability, structure, and order

8. Commerce - interest in money, profits, investment, and business opportunities

9. Aesthetics - need for self-expression, concern over look, feel, and design of work products

10. Science - quest for knowledge, research, technology, and data

The MVPI has multiple applications. It can be used for the:

• Individual – the MVPI identifies motives and values preferences that are most the important for an individual. This assists the individual with their career planning, as well as assisting their understanding as to how they may best relate to their team and organisational environment.

• Team – the MVPI establishes a team profile and illustrates matching (and miss-matching) of values and priorities within a team. By using the MVPI for team profiling, the team can develop a better appreciation and understanding of diversity of itself, as well as identifying possible internal sources of conflict.

• Organisation - the MVPI is also valuable when applied within a senior management team. MVPI profiling can assist in resolving different personal agendas, and creating agreement on the values and culture the organisation should have.

Measures of motives, values, and interests through the MVPI are different from personality measures. Personality measures (such as MBTI, HPI or HDS psychometric assessments) provide insight as to how a person may behave given a certain situation. Motives, values and interests inventories instead provide an insight in to what a person wants to do.

Motives, values, and preferences are considered largely stable; they tend to change very little as a person grows older--what interests you now will interest you later.

The MVPI takes less than 20 minutes to complete. The results of the MVPI are delivered in a report that provides a summary of the results on each scale compared to the normative sample. It does not contain any interpretive data as it is considered a breach of professional ethics to administer an MVPI assessment without person-to-person follow-up verification by a qualified practitioner.