About this assessment

Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI)

The TIPI-10 is the shortest validated Big Five personality test ever published — 10 items, 2 minutes, all five OCEAN traits. Developed by Gosling, Rentfrow & Swann at UT-Austin in 2003, it is used in thousands of peer-reviewed studies. Free, no signup, instant OCEAN profile.

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What Is the TIPI-10?

The TIPI (Ten-Item Personality Inventory) is a 10-item measure of the Big Five personality dimensions — Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Each trait is scored from two trait-pair items (one positively keyed, one reverse-keyed) rated on a 7-point scale from 'Disagree strongly' to 'Agree strongly'. The result is a compact OCEAN profile in roughly two minutes.

TIPI was designed by Sam Gosling, Peter Rentfrow, and William Swann at the University of Texas at Austin and published in the Journal of Research in Personality (2003, vol. 37, pp. 504-528). It was created specifically for situations where a longer instrument like the BFI-44 or IPIP-50 is impractical — survey studies, repeated-measures designs, and quick self-assessment. It converges with the BFI-44 at r 0.65-0.87 across traits, and 6-week test-retest reliability runs around r 0.72.

Use the TIPI when you want a fast Big Five read. For deeper accuracy and percentile precision, take the 50-item Big Five next — the OCEAN dimensions are the same, just measured with more items per trait.

What You'll Discover

Your full Big Five (OCEAN) profile in under 2 minutes — 10 items, no signup

Scores on all five dimensions: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism

Your dominant trait and the trait you score lowest on, with plain-English readouts

A peer-reviewed instrument used in thousands of academic studies — not an internet quiz

A natural lead-in to the 50-item Big Five, your next-step depth tier on the Personality axis

What a Question Looks Like

Question 1 of 10

Extraverted, enthusiastic.

9 more after this · 2 min totalAnswer this one

How It Works

1
Answer
10 questions, 2 min. Auto-advance — no manual Next.
2
See result
Instant breakdown of your profile. Free, shareable, saved if you sign in.
3
Go deeper
Premium unlocks the full report — careers, strengths, growth paths.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the TIPI-10 free to take?

Yes. The TIPI is in the academic public domain — its authors (Gosling, Rentfrow & Swann, 2003) explicitly state on the UT-Austin lab page that anyone can use it for any purpose without permission, including commercial products. JobCannon runs the test free with no signup, no email gate, and no paywall on the basic result. The premium upsell shown after the result is optional.

How accurate is a 10-item Big Five test?

Less precise than a 50-item version, but more accurate than most people assume. The TIPI's 6-week test-retest reliability sits around r 0.72, and it correlates with the longer BFI-44 at r 0.65-0.87 across the five traits. Gosling et al. (2003) explicitly designed it for situations where brevity matters more than precision — survey studies, screening, and quick self-assessment. For percentile-grade accuracy, take the 50-item Big Five instead.

Why are some questions reverse-worded?

Five of the ten items (Critical/quarrelsome, Reserved/quiet, Disorganized/careless, Calm-emotionally stable, Conventional/uncreative) are reverse-keyed: agreeing with them lowers your score on the corresponding trait. This is a standard psychometric technique that helps catch yea-saying response bias and forces you to actually read each item. The scoring engine flips the reverse-keyed responses before averaging.

What's the difference between TIPI-10 and the 50-item Big Five?

Same five dimensions (OCEAN), same theoretical framework, different item count. The TIPI uses 2 items per trait for a 2-minute snapshot; the Big Five-50 (IPIP-50) uses 10 items per trait for percentile-grade precision and a richer result page with archetypes, career fit, and trait-by-trait coaching. Think of TIPI as the entry tier, Big Five as the standard, and IPIP-NEO-120 (planned) as the deep dive.

Who created the TIPI?

Sam Gosling, Peter Rentfrow, and William Swann at the University of Texas at Austin. They published the instrument in 2003 in the Journal of Research in Personality (vol. 37, pp. 504-528). The full citation we use on JobCannon: Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B. Jr. (2003). A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37, 504-528.

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10 questions · 2 min · Result with matching careers from 2,536-profile database

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