About this project

Most free Big Five tests end at five bars. Five numbers are a summary, not a portrait: two people with the same score on Conscientiousness can differ completely once you look at whether the score comes from order, from discipline, or from a sense of duty.

The IPIP-NEO measures thirty facets, six under each domain, and the facets are where a profile becomes recognisable. That layer usually sits behind a paywall or behind a commercial inventory that only a licensed professional can order. Here it is open, because the instrument itself is open.

So the goal is narrow on purpose. Not a catalogue of quizzes, not personality types, not a label to put in a profile. Two versions of one inventory, scored carefully, explained in plain language, in as many languages as we can write well.

The items come from the International Personality Item Pool, assembled by Lewis Goldberg and colleagues, and from the IPIP-NEO inventories that John A. Johnson built on that pool. Both are in the public domain. That is the whole reason a free test with real facets can exist at all.

The English items are reproduced word for word, because the norms are only valid for the original wording. Translations into the other languages are ours and unofficial, and scoring always runs on the English canon, never on a translation.

The percentile norms are computed from the datasets Johnson published openly, filtered to complete responses with a stated sex and an age between 16 and 90. The counts above are the protocols that survived that filter. Percentiles are empirical: your raw sum is placed inside the distribution of a comparison group chosen by sex and age band, and the tables are recomputed whenever the source data or the filters change.

The norms describe people who took Johnson's online IPIP-NEO, an internet sample, not a census of the general population. We say so on every page that shows a percentile, and it is the honest caveat behind every number here.

Every explanatory text on this site is written for it. Trait descriptions, facet briefs, the domain pages and the material you unlock after paying are our own work, built from the psychometric literature and from what the norm tables actually show, not spun out of a template.

The rules we hold ourselves to are simple. A claim about a trait has to be traceable to the instrument or to published research. A number has to come from the data files, not from memory. Anything the test cannot support gets left out, however good it would sound.

When something is wrong, we correct it and change the date at the top of the page, so a reader can see that the text moved. If you find an error, tell us: a correction from a reader is worth more than a paragraph of self praise about accuracy.

It is a self report questionnaire about ordinary traits in ordinary people. It is not a medical or psychiatric instrument, it says nothing about disorders, and it is not a substitute for talking to a doctor or a psychologist.

It is not a selection tool either. Do not use these results to hire, fire, admit or screen anyone. The norms were never built for that, and once something is riding on the answers, a self report is far too easy to answer the way it needs to be answered.

And it is a snapshot. Traits are stable over years, not fixed forever, and a result taken during a hard month is a result taken during a hard month. Take it again later and compare, that comparison is often more informative than either single reading.

Taking either version is free, and the base result is free with it: five domains, thirty facets, your percentiles and the interpretations that come with them, with no account and no payment.

What is sold is extended access to that same result. One payment opens the closed sections, assembled from your own answers, and adds a written analysis produced for your profile. The price and what it opens are shown before payment, on the result page; the conditions are in a separate document.

There are no advertising networks here, no cross site trackers, and answers are never sold or traded. The site is paid for by the people who choose to open the extended part, which is the arrangement that keeps the test itself free and free of anyone else's interests. What is collected and for how long is written out in the privacy policy.

The site is run by a small independent team, not by a publisher of commercial inventories and not on anyone's behalf. There is no affiliation with the authors of the item pool beyond using material they released to the public.

Questions, corrections, research and press all go to one address, and a person reads it. It is on the contact page, along with what to include so that the answer comes back on the first try.