The instrument
MyTraitMap administers the 50-item IPIP Big-Five Factor Markers, developed by Lewis R. Goldberg and published through the International Personality Item Pool. Ten items per factor, each rated on a five-point scale from Very Inaccurate to Very Accurate.
The IPIP is in the public domain. Its items may be used, copied, edited and translated by anyone, for any purpose, without permission or fee — a deliberate choice by its authors to keep personality measurement out from behind licences. We use the items verbatim and credit the source: the scoring key and the permission statement.
The questionnaire interleaves Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism and Openness, repeating that order ten times. Positive and reverse-keyed items are mixed, but do not strictly alternate. You must answer all fifty items; the scorer does not fill in missing answers or estimate a result from an incomplete questionnaire.
Reverse keying, and why it is there
Some items are written so that agreement counts *against* the trait: "Don’t talk a lot" is a negatively keyed Extraversion item. Those answers are flipped before scoring, so a 5 becomes a 1, a 4 becomes a 2, and so on.
Reverse keying puts differently worded statements in the same scoring direction. It does not detect dishonest answers or fully remove the tendency to agree with everything. The number of positive and negative items differs across these scales, so blanket agreement does not produce five neutral scores.
The scoring arithmetic, in full
- Each answer is a whole number from 1 (Very Inaccurate) to 5 (Very Accurate).
- For a reverse-keyed item, the value used is 6 minus your answer.
- The ten values for a trait are summed, giving a raw total between 10 and 50.
- The total is rescaled to 0–100 with (total − 10) ÷ 40 × 100, then rounded to the nearest whole number.
No weighting, no adjustment, no comparison against anyone else. The five numbers are a direct arithmetic transformation of your fifty answers, and nothing else feeds into them. The scoring function is about a dozen lines long and is covered by unit tests.
Reliability: the published figures
A worked scoring example
Suppose the ten values for one trait, after reverse keying, are 4, 3, 5, 2, 4, 3, 4, 2, 5 and 3. Their sum is 35. MyTraitMap calculates (35 − 10) ÷ 40 × 100 = 62.5 and rounds it to 63. That means an average keyed response of 3.5 out of 5; it does not mean the 63rd percentile. The original IPIP scoring instructions stop at the summed score. The 0–100 display and rounding are MyTraitMap’s presentation choices.
For a reverse-keyed response of 4, the scorer uses 6 − 4 = 2. We invert all ten Emotional Stability keys to report Neuroticism, so higher means more emotional sensitivity. This happens before summing and rounding. With ten whole-number responses, raw sums move in steps of 1, equivalent to 2.5 display points before rounding; not every integer on the display can arise from a completed test.
Audit the item directions
Each trait guide lists its actual ten statements and marks the items reversed by this app: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Compare these with the official key, remembering that its Factor IV points toward Emotional Stability while ours points toward Neuroticism.
Internal consistency is one kind of evidence
The official IPIP key reports the following alpha coefficients for its ten-item scales. These are published source figures, not measurements collected from MyTraitMap visitors:
| Scale (IPIP factor) | Cronbach’s alpha, 10 items |
|---|---|
| Extraversion (I) | .87 |
| Agreeableness (II) | .82 |
| Conscientiousness (III) | .79 |
| Emotional Stability (IV) — reported here, reversed, as Neuroticism | .86 |
| Intellect / Imagination (V) — reported here as Openness | .84 |
For comparison, the 20-item versions of the same scales reach .88 to .91. Doubling the length buys a few points of consistency and costs twice the time; the 50-item form is the standard trade-off, and it is the one this site takes.
What a change in your score can mean
A repeat result can change because of your circumstances, your interpretation of an item, ordinary measurement variation or a longer-term change in habits. These five scores alone cannot separate those explanations. We have no validated ten-point “noise” cutoff or twenty-point “real change” cutoff. A confidence interval would need suitable sample data and a justified error model; the published alpha values alone do not supply one in our display units.
For a useful repeat, answer with a similar time frame and context in mind, then compare concrete examples from your life. Do not assume that your highest trait is unusually high relative to other people: each scale contains different items, and the five have not been standardized onto a common population distribution.
Why there are no percentiles here
A percentile requires a norm sample: a group of people, of known composition, whose scores yours is ranked against. Norms are specific to language, age band, culture and often era, and a norm built from self-selected internet visitors is not representative of any population you would want to be compared to.
MyTraitMap has no norm sample, so it reports scale scores — where your answers sat on the response scale — and says so on the results page, on the shareable badge, and here. A percentile we could not defend would look more authoritative and mean less. Reading your scores explains how to interpret a scale score properly.
What this test cannot do
- It cannot diagnose anything. The Big Five is a model of normal personality variation. It is not a clinical instrument, and no score here indicates a disorder.
- It cannot be used to make decisions about other people. Not hiring, not promotion, not placement, not admission. A five-minute self-report questionnaire is not evidence about anyone’s suitability for anything.
- It cannot see through a deliberate answer. There is no lie scale. Answer as you wish you were and you will get a description of who you wish you were.
- It cannot resolve facets. Ten items produce one number per trait. Someone high on imagination and low on intellectual curiosity gets a middling Openness score that describes neither half well.
- It cannot be culture-neutral. The items are English-language and were developed on a US community sample. Translation and cross-cultural use change how the items behave.
- It cannot tell you what to do. It describes tendencies. What you make of them is not a psychometric question.
Privacy, and how the scoring runs
Your answers are scored by JavaScript in your own browser. They are held in memory for the duration of the tab, are not written to storage, and are cleared when you refresh or close it. No answer is transmitted to MyTraitMap, and there is no account to create.
You do not have to take that on trust. Open your browser’s developer tools, switch to the Network tab, and take the test: no request carries your answers, because there is nothing on the other end to receive them. A shared profile link and a downloaded badge contain your five scores — those you create deliberately, and only those five numbers travel.
Frequently asked
Is the IPIP-50 the same test as the NEO-PI-R?
No. They are separate instruments measuring the same five factors. The NEO inventories are commercial, much longer, and report facet scores; the IPIP markers are public domain, short, and report the five broad factors only. IPIP scales are constructed to correspond to established inventories, but a score on one is not interchangeable with a score on the other.
Why does this test call it Neuroticism when IPIP calls it Emotional Stability?
The same ten items, reported in the opposite direction. Goldberg’s scale scores steadiness; most Big Five research reports sensitivity. MyTraitMap reverses the scale so that a high score means greater emotional sensitivity, which is the convention readers are most likely to have met elsewhere.
Why is Openness described as Intellect and Imagination?
Because that is what Goldberg called Factor V, and it is an accurate label for what these particular ten items measure. This scale weights intellectual curiosity and imagination more heavily than aesthetic sensitivity and unconventional values, which the NEO Openness scale also covers.
How accurate is a 50-item personality test?
The official key reports internal-consistency coefficients from .79 to .87, but those are not accuracy percentages or evidence validating this website. MyTraitMap has no visitor norms, test–retest study or validated margin of error. Use the result for reflection, not diagnosis or selection.
Will I get the same result if I take it again?
It may differ. Context, interpretation and measurement variation can all affect answers. We have not measured test–retest reliability for MyTraitMap, so cannot promise a particular amount of stability or say that a given point change proves a change in personality.
Do you store my answers?
No. Scoring happens in your browser, answers are never transmitted, and they are cleared when you close or refresh the tab. There is no account and no database of results.
Sources
- Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. *Psychological Assessment*, 4, 26–42.
- International Personality Item Pool — 50-item Big-Five Factor Markers scoring key, with alpha coefficients.
- International Personality Item Pool — public-domain permission statement.
- Barrick, M. R., & Mount, M. K. (1991). The Big Five personality dimensions and job performance: a meta-analysis. *Personnel Psychology*, 44, 1–26.