About Personality Test

Personality Test is a small independent site that offers free personality tests built on published research, explains the results in plain language, and keeps every result private to the person who took it.

The Big Five model

The Big Five (also called the five-factor model or OCEAN) describes personality with five broad traits: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Each trait is a scale, not a type: most people sit somewhere in the middle, and both ends have strengths and costs. It is the model most widely used in academic personality research.

The statements

The test uses the IPIP-NEO-120, 120 statements from the public-domain International Personality Item Pool, published by psychologist John A. Johnson in 2014. It measures the five traits and six narrower facets within each, with four statements per facet. We use the published statements word for word and in the published order.

How answers are scored

1. You rate each statement from "Very inaccurate" (1) to "Very accurate" (5). Statements worded in the opposite direction, such as "Rarely get irritated", are reverse-scored.
2. Each facet score is the sum of its four statements (4–20).
3. Each trait score is the average of its six facet scores (4–20).
4. Each score is turned into an estimated percentile by comparing it with 320,128 US adults who took the IPIP-NEO-120 online (Kajonius & Johnson, 2019), assuming scores follow a normal curve. Percentiles are shown from 1 to 99.

A percentile of 70 means you scored higher than about 70% of that sample. Scores are grouped into five bands, following the convention of personality profile sheets: very low (1st–6th), low (7th–30th), average (31st–68th), high (69th–92nd) and very high (93rd–99th).

Scoring runs on our server when you submit. The code is checked against values calculated independently from the published scoring key and norm tables.

What the results can and can't tell you

• They describe how you see yourself. Your mood, your situation and how candidly you answer all affect the scores.
• Trait scores are more precise than facet scores. In the norm sample, the five trait scales had reliabilities (Cronbach's alpha) of .82 to .90; the facets, with only four statements each, ranged from .66 to .88.
• The comparison group isn't everyone. The norm sample is volunteers who took the test online: 60% women, with an average age of 28. A score near a band edge is approximate.
• They are not a diagnosis. The test is for self-reflection and education. It isn't a clinical assessment and shouldn't be used to make hiring decisions about other people.

Who runs the site

Personality Test is written and maintained by a small independent team. We don't claim clinical credentials; every method on the site comes from the published sources below, and we say plainly where the evidence is weaker.

Privacy

You can take the test without an account. Your result opens only in the browser that took the test (or in your account, if you save it there), it is never indexed by search engines, and you can delete it permanently from the result page. Details are in the Privacy Policy.

Sources

• Johnson, J. A. (2014). Measuring thirty facets of the Five Factor Model with a 120-item public domain inventory: Development of the IPIP-NEO-120. Journal of Research in Personality, 51, 78–89. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2014.05.003
• Kajonius, P. J., & Johnson, J. A. (2019). Assessing the structure of the Five Factor Model of Personality (IPIP-NEO-120) in the public domain. Europe's Journal of Psychology, 15(2), 260–275. doi:10.5964/ejop.v15i2.1671
• Goldberg, L. R., Johnson, J. A., Eber, H. W., Hogan, R., Ashton, M. C., Cloninger, C. R., & Gough, H. G. (2006). The International Personality Item Pool and the future of public-domain personality measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 84–96. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2005.08.007
• International Personality Item Pool: ipip.ori.org

Contact

support@personality-test.app