Big Five personality test for students: the five traits explained

Short facts

• The Big Five is the most established model of personality in academic psychology.
• Personality Snapshot: twenty Mini-IPIP statements, four on each trait, about four minutes, free.
• Personality Snapshot Deep takes about nine minutes and is free. The longer five trait picture: fifty questions, ten on each trait.
• The Mini-IPIP was published by Donnellan and colleagues in 2006, from the International Personality Item Pool.

The five traits

Each trait is a scale, and everyone sits somewhere along each one.

• Openness: curiosity, and an appetite for new experience and ideas.
• Conscientiousness: organisation, and following through on what you start.
• Extraversion: sociability and assertiveness.
• Agreeableness: cooperation and trust.
• Emotional stability: how steady you tend to stay under pressure. In the Mini-IPIP it is the published neuroticism scale, read from the other end.

In the Mini-IPIP the openness scale is called Intellect. It is four questions about imagination and interest in ideas, and it measures no ability of any kind.

High and low are directions, not grades

A high count on a trait is not better than a low one.

Someone low on extraversion may think most clearly alone; someone high may draw energy from a busy room. Both are ordinary. What helps is knowing which way you lean, so you can choose study and work that suit it, or plan around it.

Twenty questions or fifty

Personality Snapshot is the short version; Personality Snapshot Deep asks ten questions on each trait.

Twenty questions answered on one day give a rough picture, and a longer questionnaire would move some of the counts. Personality Snapshot also names a short summary, but the five counts it came from are always printed directly above it, so you can see where it came from.

What personality says about careers

On its own, less than people expect.

Personality describes how you tend to act, not which work you would enjoy. For career choice it is most useful next to your interests and values. Career Discovery uses it as one input, together with interests, thinking strengths and values, when it ranks careers and courses for you.

What any test cannot tell you

A personality result describes how you answered on one day. It is not a type and not a diagnosis, it says nothing about mental health, and it cannot tell you how you will do in any exam. Traits also shift with age.

Where to start

Or start with a free test

• Personality SnapshotAbout four minutes, freeFive traits, a named summary, and what each one looks like in your week.
• Personality Snapshot DeepAbout nine minutes, freeThe longer five trait picture: fifty questions, ten on each trait.

No card needed. Log in to start. Under 18s: a parent agrees before the result is shown.

Questions