Self-esteem scale (IPIP)

The scale comes from the International Personality Item Pool, a collection of questionnaire statements that its authors have given to everyone. It is the pool's own counterpart of the self-esteem scale of the sociologist Morris Rosenberg, which is why both works are cited below. It is not the Rosenberg scale itself: its statements are worded differently.

Each statement describes a person, for example "Feel comfortable with myself". You say how accurate it is as a description of you, from very inaccurate to very accurate. Half of the statements are positive and half are critical.

Answers are numbers from one for very inaccurate to five for very accurate. The five critical statements are counted backwards, so that a higher number always means a more positive view of yourself: an answer of 2 to a critical statement counts as 4. The score is the average of the ten statements, so it lies between one and five.

The authors' key lists the five positive statements first and then the five critical ones, and says nothing about the order in which to ask them. The list below follows the key. The test page of this site shows the statements in a mixed order.

How you see yourself moves with your mood, your week and what has just happened. One short scale can show how you answered, not why. The International Personality Item Pool reports figures for this scale from its own community sample: its statements agree with one another and its scores follow the Rosenberg scale closely. Those figures are the pool's own, not those of an independent study. We cite no published study that validated this exact scale, so this site treats the result as a plain description of your answers and compares you with no one.

If thoughts about yourself weigh on you for a long time, talk to someone you trust or to a professional. An online questionnaire is not the right tool for that.

The self-esteem test asks these statements and describes your answers in everyday words, on a page that carries no advertisements. How the site works out and words its results is described on the methodology page.