Self-esteem test

Your result is one score, the average of your ten answers, placed on a scale from 1 to 5. A score near the top means you called most of the positive statements accurate and most of the critical ones inaccurate. A score near the bottom means the reverse. A score in the middle means your answers were mixed, which is the most common thing for a person to feel about themselves.

The sentence under your score names its place on the scale in everyday words. This test uses ten statements of its own, so no study prints an average for exactly this scale that we could read. The best-known self-esteem questionnaire is a different one, the Rosenberg scale: ten statements answered on four points and added up, from ten to forty. In an open study of 727 teenagers in Norway, the average on it was 28.1 out of forty^[2]. That is a different scale, so it is only a rough guide: your score here is not placed on it, and nothing is converted.

Self-esteem is not one fixed number that you have. It moves with the week you had, with who you were with, with how much you slept. A low score on a hard day says that the day was hard. A high score on a good day says it was good. Take the result as a snapshot you can look at and then put down, never as a verdict on who you are.

The test is the self-esteem scale of the International Personality Item Pool, a public-domain collection of questionnaire items that researchers share freely^[1]. The scale is the open analogue of the scale that Morris Rosenberg published decades ago, which is among the most widely used in the field. Its 10 statements are in the authors' own English words. The pool's own table reports that this scale agrees closely with the Rosenberg scale, but we have not found a published study that validates this exact version, so we do not call it validated, and the page says so in the details under your result.

• Your score is the average of the ten statements, five of them counted backwards, on a scale from 1 to 5.
• You may leave out a statement or two where the score still stands. Leave out more than that and the test asks for more answers, because a score from too few statements would not describe you.
• The statements come in a different order each time, so that two goes at the test never look the same.
• Your answers are saved in this browser after each statement, and kept for a month if you stop. Once your result is saved, the unfinished sheet is deleted.
• If the answers came quicker than the statements can be read, the result is shown, and it says so in plain words.

Below are the statements, how they are scored, the licence and the paper, exactly as we use them.

The same person can answer these statements very differently on two days. A good conversation, a bad night's sleep, a mistake at work or a compliment can each move one answer by a point, and with ten statements a point or two moves the average a little. If you take the test again in a month, expect to land in the same fifth of the scale or the one next to it. A change of more than that usually has a reason you can name.

Half of the statements describe feeling good about yourself and half describe the opposite. This is on purpose. Some people tend to agree with whatever they read, and a test made only of positive statements would score them high for that habit alone. Mixing the two directions lets the average cancel it out. You do not have to do anything about it: just answer each statement as it stands.

• Feeling comfortable with yourself, and knowing your strengths.
• Expecting to do well, and being willing to take responsibility for decisions.
• Seldom feeling low, and not disliking yourself.
• Trusting your ability to do your work and to deal with things as they come.

These are everyday ways of describing how a person sees their own worth and ability. Researchers group them under one name, self-esteem, and measure it by how many of them a person says fit. A high score does not mean a person is always confident, and a low one does not mean they are unhappy.

It cannot tell you why you feel the way you do, it cannot say whether anything is wrong, and it cannot predict how you will feel next week. It is ten statements and a score. Use it the way you would use a mirror: a quick look at how you see yourself right now, which you can compare with how you see yourself on another day.