Various studies have been conducted to inductively locate the aspects of occupation in one generation which are transmitted to the next generation as found in corresponding aspects of their labor force aspirations and entry levels. This study restricted attention to intergenerational covariation in components of roles rather than to the structural or interpersonal mechanisms which might explain transmission. Occupations were conceptualized and measured on the basis of indicators for role requirements, content, and rewards. (The author states that role transmission presumes covariation between the requisites, routines, and rewards of parental occupations and the corresponding components of offspring aspirations and eventual labor force occupations.) Data were collected from a national sample of male members of the civilian labor force and from a sample of Michigan high school males. Canonical correlation analysis was used as a multivariate strategy for partitioning the covariance between two sets of scores into orthogonal pairs of linear combinations (dimensions). Canonical correlation analyses for two role relationships, involving parent occupation, early career occupation and late adolescent occupational aspirations, show that (1) role transmission occurs for a multiplicity of occupational characteristics which span requirements, content, and rewards of roles; (2) that the two role relationships are not isomorphic in their structure; (3) that there is support for recent arguments that complexity of roles is a key organizing feature of role transmission processes; and (4) that there is mixed support for recent research on patterns of intergenerational occupational movement. (Author/BM)